JPH0245171A - Electrophotographic type printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To shorten the drawing time by incorporating a hard disk and a hard disk-control circuit. CONSTITUTION:A CPU 9 reads and processes a character data from a ROM 6, and writes a developing data developed and processed to a bit pattern to a drawing memory 8. The developing data is written simultaneously to a RAM 7. When the number of characters developed is increased, the number of the characters exceeds the capacity of the RAM. The developing data is written to a hard disk 4 at that time. Consequently, when there is a developed data in the RAM 7 or the hard disk 4, the CPU 9 loads the developed data and can draw it to the drawing memory 8. When the developing data of character having the high frequency of usage are stored in the RAM and the developing data of characters having a low frequency of usage in the hard disk 4 previously, the drawing time can further be shortened.

Description

[Detailed description of the invention] [Industrial application field] The present invention relates to electrophotographic printers.

[Conventional technology]

Conventional electrophotographic printers do not have a hard disk or hard disk control circuit connected to the control circuit, so data such as character fonts that must be prepared in advance are stored in ROM.
Data generated in the data processing process or required data is saved and loaded in the RAM for data processing.

[Problem to be solved by the invention]

Therefore, the amount of data that can be handled by ROM and RAM has been limited to about several megabits. Another disadvantage is that it takes time to process the data in the ROM and expand it to the drawing memory.

[Means to solve the problem]

The electrophotographic printer of the present invention includes a printer engine, which is a printing mechanism, and a control circuit that controls the printer engine, processes data from a host device, and outputs print data to the printer engine. , a hard disk control circuit connected to this control circuit, and a hard disk connected to this hard disk control circuit.

〔Example〕

Next, the present invention will be explained with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an embodiment of the present invention, and this electrophotographic printer includes a printer engine 1, a control circuit 2, and a hard disk control circuit 3.
and a hard disk 4.

Control circuit 2 that received data 5 from the host device
accesses the hard disk 4 through the hard disk control circuit 3 in the data processing process, and outputs print data to the printer engine 1 after data processing.

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating the operation of the control circuit 2 to access the hard disk 4. As shown in FIG. Here, the process of developing and drawing character data in the drawing memory 8 will be explained as an example. Zero character data is stored in the ROM 6. CPU
Reference numeral 9 reads character data from the ROM 6, processes it, and writes the expanded data, which has been expanded into a bit pattern, into the drawing memory 8. At the same time, the expanded data is written to RAM7.

If the number of expanded characters increases, the RAM capacity will be exceeded. At this time, the expanded data is written to the hard disk. With this configuration, if there is already expanded data in the RAM 7 or hard disk 4, the CPU 9 loads the expanded data and stores it in the drawing memory 8.
You can draw to.

Furthermore, by storing the expanded data of frequently used characters in the RAM and the expanded data of less frequently used characters on the hard disk 4, the drawing time can be further shortened.

In addition, the capacity of character data that can be stored in ROM 6 is approximately several megabytes, but by storing it in a hard disk, it is possible to store several times the capacity of ROM, so it can be loaded into the control circuit 2 and used as needed. You can also.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As explained above, the electrophotographic printer of the present invention has a built-in hard disk and hard disk control circuit, which reduces the drawing time, and increases the amount of data that can be handled. This has the effect of increasing.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of one embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing a hard disk access operation in the control circuit shown in the figure. 1... Printer engine, 2... Control circuit, 3... Hard disk control circuit, 4...
...Hard disk, 5...Data from host device,
6...ROM, 7...RAM, 8...drawing memory, 9...CPU.

Claims (1)

[Claims] A printer engine that is a printing mechanism, a control circuit that controls this printer engine, processes data from a host device, and outputs print data to the printer engine, and a hard disk connected to this control circuit. - An electrophotographic printer characterized by comprising a control circuit and a hard disk connected to the hard disk control circuit.