JPH03143640A - Printer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To enable high speed printing to be performed without requiring necessity for editing a dot data according to the pin array in a printing head by a method wherein a dot pattern of a character is stored in a CG memory according to the dot array in the printing head, and a logical product is taken from the dot array data read from the memory and said dot pattern. CONSTITUTION:When a data is read from a CG memory 2, a pin array data is read from a pin array data memory 3 in synchronization therewith, and both are inputted to an AND circuit 5. The AND circuit 5 extracts only a necessary data from data to be read from the CG memory 2, and outputs that. A data to be outputted from the AND circuit 5 is stored in a buffer memory 6, which is read at specified printing timing with said DMA circuit 9, and is printed with a printing head 8 via a printing control circuit 7.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a printing device, and particularly to a dot-type printing device suitable for high-speed printing.

[Prior art] A conventional dot printing device is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 57-49572.
As disclosed in the above publication, the dot pattern stored in the character generator memory (hereinafter referred to as CG memory) is suitable when a plurality of bins forming the dots of the print head are arranged in a vertical line. As you do,
-Character hands are stored one by one. Therefore, if the pin arrangement of the print head is in a single row, the dot pattern can be read directly from the CG memory, but if the pin arrangement of the print head is a so-called two-row arrangement or a diamond arrangement, According to the pin arrangement of each head, data for one character is read out sequentially from discrete addresses,
Must be stored in buffer memory.

[Problems to be Solved by the Invention] In the above-mentioned conventional technology, no consideration is given to the pin arrangement of the print head. It was necessary to edit the dot data in the CG memory to match the pin arrangement of the print head. Therefore, there is a problem that the pin arrangement of the print head becomes complicated and the printing speed decreases.

The present invention has been made in view of the problems of the prior art described above, and an object of the present invention is to provide a printing device capable of high-speed printing.

[Means for Solving the Problems] The printing device of the present invention includes a CG memory that stores character patterns, a buffer memory that temporarily stores dot data read from the CG memory, and a dot-type print head. , a print control unit that takes out dot data from the buffer memory and causes the print head to print it; and each of the above parts: 1. In particular, the CG memory stores a dot pattern that matches the dot arrangement of the print head, and further stores a dot pattern that matches the dot arrangement of the print head. The dot array data memory that stores the above CG
An AND circuit is provided for manually inputting the dot pattern read from the memory and the dot array pattern read from the dot array data memory, and the dot pattern output from the AND circuit is stored in the buffer memory. It is characterized by its composition.

[Operation] According to the present invention, the dot pattern of a character is stored in the CG memory in accordance with the dot arrangement of the print head, and the dot pattern is ANDed with the dot arrangement data of the print head read from the dot arrangement data memory. The resulting dot pattern is printed via a buffer memory. Therefore, there is no need to edit the dot data in the CG memory to match the pin arrangement of the print head, and high-speed printing becomes possible.

[Embodiments] The present invention will be explained in more detail below with reference to embodiments shown in the attached drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of the printing device of the present invention. The printing device shown in FIG. 1 includes a microprocessor 1, a CG memory 2, a pin arrangement data memory 3, a counter 4, an AND circuit 5, a buffer memory 6, a print control circuit 7, and wire dot type printing. Head 8 and
It is composed of a DMA circuit 9 and a bus 10.

Here, as shown in FIG. 2(a), the pins P1 to PIO of the print head 8 have a diamond-shaped pin arrangement, and the printing position of each pin P1 to PIO is as shown in FIG. 2(b). The arrangement will be as shown in .

Further, the CG memory 2 stores, for example, the dot-configured characters rAJ and rBJ shown in FIG. 3 in an arrangement as shown in FIG. 4. That is, the character rAJ is stored at addresses O-17 of the memory 2, each word of which is 10 bits, and the character rBJ is stored at addresses 9-23 of the memory 2, each word of which is 10 bits. Here, 1 of each address
The ith bit corresponds to the print data of pin P1 of the print head 8, the 2nd bit corresponds to the print data of pin P2 of the print head 8, and similarly, the i-th bit corresponds to the print data of pin P1 of the print head 8. =1 to 10). Therefore, the data such as the characters rAJ shown in FIG.
Depending on the arrangement of pins P1 to PLO, that is, the difference in printing timing caused by this arrangement, each dot is arranged with a predetermined number of bits apart. Furthermore, as shown in FIG. 4, each character is stored at partially overlapping addresses in the CG memory 2 (9 addresses in this embodiment).

Further, as shown in FIG.
The data shown in the figure is stored. Like the CG memory 2, this data is composed of 1 word of 10 bits, and is masked by taking an AND condition using the data read from the CG memory 2 and the AND circuit 5. Data for one character is extracted from data read out from the CG memory 2 in which two or more characters are stored redundantly.

Further, the counter 4 shown in FIG. 1 counts up each time data for one address is read from the CG memory 2, and counts up by 18 each time data for one character is read from the bin array data memory 3. Cleared to zero each time.

Next, the operation of the embodiment shown in FIG. 1 will be explained. Now, if data regarding the character "A J" is read out from the CG memory 2, the bin array data is read out from the pin array data memory 3 in synchronization with this, and both are input to the AND circuit 5.AND circuit 5 is, as mentioned above, CG
Only the data of the character rAJ is extracted from the data read from the memory 2, and only the data of the character rAJ is output as shown in FIG. The data output from the AND circuit 5 is stored in a buffer memory 6, read out by the DMA circuit 9 at a predetermined printing timing, and printed by the print head 8 via the print control circuit 7.

In addition, in the embodiment described above, the CG memory 2
Each character data stored in 1 is stored redundantly as shown in FIG. Therefore, the memory capacity required for the CG memory 2 can be small. For example, if the number of horizontal dots of printed characters is n and the number of stored characters is m, then C
The memory capacity required for G memory 2 is nX(m+1
) becomes a dot.

Further, in the above embodiment, the print head is a wire dot type print head having a plurality of bins, but the present invention is not limited to this.
For example, it may be a dot type print head, and can also be applied to a thermal transfer type print head.

[Effects of the Invention] As is clear from the above explanation, according to the present invention, dot data adapted to the pin arrangement of the print head is stored in the CG memory, and furthermore, while taking an AND condition with the pin arrangement data of the print head, This eliminates the need to edit the dot data in the CG memory to match the print head's pin arrangement, and high-speed printing is possible even when the print head's pin arrangement is in a two-row arrangement or a diamond arrangement. become.

Furthermore, since the dot data for one character is stored in the CG memory partially overlapping with the data for another character, this can be realized without increasing the capacity of the CG memory.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing one embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 2 (
a) is an explanatory diagram showing the pin arrangement of the print head shown in Fig. 1, Fig. 2 (b) is an explanatory diagram showing the printing position of each pin shown in Fig. 2 (a), and Fig. 3 is an explanatory diagram showing the printing position of each pin shown in Fig. 2 (a). An explanatory diagram showing an example of a design, FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of dot data stored in the CG memory shown in FIG. 1, and FIG.
Fig. 6 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of data stored in the bin array data memory shown in Fig. 6.
FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram showing an example of dot data stored in the buffer memory shown in the figure. l...Microprocessor, 2...CG memory, 3
...Pin arrangement data memory, 4...Counter, 5.
...AND circuit, 6...Buffer memory, 7...Print control circuit, 8...Print head, P1-P2...Bin.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A character generator memory that stores character patterns, a buffer memory that temporarily stores dot data read from the character generator memory,
In a printing device that includes a dot-type print head, a print control unit that retrieves dot data from a buffer memory and causes the print head to print it, and a microprocessor that controls each of the above parts, the character generator memory is A dot array data memory that stores a dot pattern that matches the dot array of the print head, and a dot array data memory that stores the dot array pattern of the print head, and a dot pattern read from the character generator memory and the dot array data memory that stores the dot array pattern of the print head. 1. A printing device comprising: an AND circuit for inputting the output dot array pattern; and the dot pattern output from the AND circuit is stored in the buffer memory.