JPH047631A - Number of printed sheets displaying shared printer system - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To display the number of printed sheets used actually by an individual host computer on a system, and to bear correctly the expenditure of the articles of consumption, etc., of a printing devie by counting up the contents of a storage means corresponding to each host computer every time printing by the individual host computer is executed. CONSTITUTION:Plural number of pieces of non-volatile storage means 11a to 11n to store the number of printed sheets for every host computer 1a to 1n, and a display means 61 to show it to the user of the system are provided. Besides, a printed sheets number control means 6 to count up the contents of the corresponding storage means 11 every time the printing for every individual host computer 1a to 1n is executed is provided. Thus, since the corresponding non-volatile storage means functions as the counter of the number of the printed sheets in response to the printing by every individual host computer 1a to 1n, the user can know the individual number of printed sheets by displaying it.

Description

[Detailed Description of the Invention] [Industrial Application Field] The present invention relates to a shared computer system consisting of a plurality of host computers such as personal computers and word processors that create text and graphic documents, and a printing device that prints the documents. The present invention relates to a printer system and a method for displaying the number of printed sheets for each host computer in the system.

[Conventional technology]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, high-speed printers such as laser printers have become popular as printing devices in systems using word processors or personal computers as host computers, due to increasing market needs for high quality, high-speed print output, and low noise. However, such printing devices are expensive, they are not used very often, and there is a market need to reduce the installation space of the entire system. Systems that reduce the cost of printing devices per host computer by sharing them among multiple host computers such as word processors and personal computers have been commercialized on the market. An example of such a shared printer system is the system described in "Hitachi Japanese Word Processor Laser Printer Network System Catalog 0A-331PJ. This system is a network consisting of a laser printer main body and a laser printer controller. A printing device in charge of line control and multiple word processors, each with a unique identification number registered, are connected to a network using communication cables, and print requests can be received from among the multiple word processors using the network line control procedure. One word processor is connected to a printing device via a line to perform printing.

[Problem to be solved by the invention]

In the conventional shared printer system described above, the number of pages printed by the entire system can be determined using the print counter built into the printing device, but no consideration is given to displaying the number of pages actually printed by each host computer. However, there was still a problem that needed improvement in that it was not possible to accurately allocate the cost of consumables for the printing device to each user of the host computer.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to provide a shared printer system in which the number of sheets actually printed by each host computer is displayed on the system, and expenses such as consumables for printing devices can be accurately borne.

[Means to solve the problem]

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a shared printer system including a plurality of non-volatile storage means for storing the number of prints for each host computer, a display means for displaying the number of prints for each host computer, and a display means for displaying the number of prints for each host computer. A number of printed sheets management means is provided for counting up the contents of the storage means corresponding to each time printing is executed for each computer.

[Effect]

In this way, the non-volatile storage means corresponding to the printing performed by each host computer functions as a counter for the number of printed sheets, and by displaying the counter, the user can know the number of printed sheets for each individual host computer.

〔Example〕

An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to FIG. 1 and FIGS. 3A and 3B, using a word processor as a host computer and a laser printer as a printing device.

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing the configuration of an embodiment of the present invention. 1
(la, lb, -, in) is a word processor, and the word processor body 29 display screen 3. keyboard 4
It consists of 7 is a printing device (laser printer), which prints according to the print document data 201 sent from the laser printer engine 6, which is the main body part that actually prints dot data on cut paper such as A4 size paper, and the word processor 1. The printer controller 5 includes a printer controller 5 that generates tote data.

Reference numeral 61 denotes a mechanical counter, and each time the laser printer engine 6 prints one page, a CPU (not shown) in the laser printer engine 6 instructs it to count up. Therefore, the mechanical counter 61 shows the total number of sheets printed for the entire system. Note that this CPU is in charge of various controls of the laser printer engine 6.

The operation is instructed by a software program (not shown) within the laser printer engine 6. 11 (
lla, llb, -, 1ln) are nonvolatile memories, and the data stored therein is rewritten by the CPU (not shown) in the word processor body 2. This CP
U is word processor 1 (la, lb,..., 1n
), and its operations are instructed by a software program (not shown) in the word processor main body 2. word processor 1
(1a, 1b, -, 1n) and the printing device 7 are connected to the network via a high-speed serial line, and the print document data 2
01. Data such as one-page printing completion notification 202 and document printing completion notification 203 are exchanged. Next, a certain user uses multiple word processors 1 (la, lb,
. . -, in), the word processor 1 (la.

lb,..., 1n) side processing flow is shown in Fig. 3 (A
) The operation of the system shown in FIG. 1 will be explained according to the processing flow in (B). Note that the nonvolatile memory 11 (lla, ll
b, -, 1ln) are each cleared to zero by the CPU in the word processor body 2 in advance. First, the operation when printing a document will be explained using the processing flow shown in FIG. 3(A). When the user instructs the word processor 1a to print a document, the word processor 1a sends the corresponding print document data 201 to the printing device [7].
Step 101]. Although the process flow diagram is omitted here, when the printing device 7 receives the print document data 201, it starts printing, and each time it finishes printing one page, it sends the status data of the one-page print completion notification 202, and prints the When all the printing corresponding to the document data 201 is completed, the status data of the document print completion notification 203 is sent to the word processor (word processor la) that sent the print document data 201. After the processing in step 101, the word processor 1a determines whether or not there is a one-page printing end notification 202 from the printing device W7 [step 102] L. If so, the word processor 1a
1 (11a) is counted up by 1 [Step 102].

Thereafter, the word processor 1a determines whether there is a document printing completion notification 203 from the printing device 7 [step 10
4] If there is L, the process ends; otherwise, the process returns to step 102. In the case of printing a 5-page document from the word processor 1a, this process is repeated four times, so when the document printing is finished, the non-volatile memory lla is
is counted up by 5, and other non-volatile memories except non-volatile memory lla (ll
b, .
) are the respective word processors 1 (la.

It functions as a host-specific printed sheet counter that counts only the number of printed sheets for each host (lb, . . . , 1n).

Next, the display process of the number of printed sheets will be explained using the process flow on the word processor 1 side shown in FIG. 3(B).

For example, when the user instructs the word processor 1a to display a print counter for each host using the keyboard 4, which is a component of the word processor 1a, the word processor 1a determines this [Step 110] and stores it in its own non-volatile memory ll.
The value of a is displayed on the display screen 3 [step 111]. Therefore, if the user performs this operation for each word processor 1 (la, lb, ... in), the number of printed pages for each host will be known. be able to.

Another embodiment of the present invention is shown in FIGS. 2 and 4 (A), (B) (
C). FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the configuration of another embodiment of the present invention. To explain only the parts in FIG. 2 that are different from FIG. 1, 51 (51a, 51b, . . .
. , 51n) are nonvolatile memories, and are provided in one-to-one correspondence with the word processors 1 connected to the system. Nonvolatile memories 51a and 51be for explanation
...51n are word processors la and lb, respectively.

..., 1n. Data stored in the nonvolatile memory 51 is rewritten by a CPU (not shown) in the printer controller 5, which is a component of the printing device N7. This CPU is responsible for various data processing and control of the printer controller 5.
The operation is instructed by a software program (not shown) within the printer controller 5. Reference numeral 52 denotes an operation panel provided in the printer controller 5, which includes a section for inputting various operation instructions from the user to the printer controller 5, and a display section for displaying status data and the like from the printer controller 5 for the user. 30
1 is word processor 1 (la, lb,...in)
This is a counter value request command sent from the printer controller 5 to the printer controller 5. 4(A) and 4(B) are process flow diagrams performed by the printer controller 5, and FIG. 4(C) shows the printer controller 5 and the word processor 1 (la
.

lb,..., 1n) is a processing flow diagram.

Note that the nonvolatile memory 51 (51a, 51b, . . .
51n) are each cleared to zero by the CPU in the printer controller 5 in advance. First, the operation when printing a document will be explained using the processing flow shown in FIG. 4(A). When a user instructs the word processor 1a to print, for example, a five-page document, the word processor 1a sends the corresponding print document data 201 to the printing device 7.

The printing device 7 first determines whether or not the print document data 201 has been received [step 120]L, and if so, starts printing [step 121], and then determines whether printing of one page has been completed [step 122]. ]L,,1
When printing of the page is completed, the non-volatile memory 5 corresponding to the word processor 1a that sent the print document data 201
Count up the contents of 1a by 1 [Step 12
3], Finally, the printing device 7 determines whether printing of all of the print document data 201 has been completed [Step 124]L.
If printing has been completed, the process is immediately terminated; if printing has not been completed, the process returns to step 122.

In the case of printing a 5-page document, this process is repeated 4 times, so when the printing of the document is finished, the non-volatile memory 51a will have counted up by 5, and the contents of the non-volatile memory 51a will be counted up by 5. The contents of the nonvolatile memories (51b, . . . , 51n) do not change, therefore, the nonvolatile memories 51 (51a, 51b, . . . =
, 51n) are each word processor 1 (la,
It functions as a host-specific printed sheet counter that counts only the number of printed sheets for each (lb, -, in).

Next, the processing flow performed by the printer controller 5 in FIG. 4(B), and the printer controller 5 and word processor 1 (la, lb, . . . , 1 in FIG. 4(C))
The process of displaying the number of printed sheets will be explained with reference to a process flowchart performed by n). When the user instructs, for example, to display the number of printed sheets counter for each host from the operation panel 52, the printer controller 5 determines this [step 130] and stores the values in its own nonvolatile memory 51 (51a, 51b, -, 51n). Display on the operation panel 52 [Step 131].

Further, when the user instructs the display of the number of printed sheets counter for each host from the keyboard 4 of the word processor 1a, the word processor 1a determines this [step 14
0]L, sends the counter value request command 301 to the printer controller 5 [Step 141], When the printer controller 5 receives the counter value request command 301', it sends the counter value request command 301 to its own non-volatile memory 51 (51a, 5
1b.

..., 51n) is sent to the word processor 1a [step 142]L, and the word processor 1a that receives it displays the value on the display screen 3 [step 143]. Therefore, by performing any of these operations, the user can know the total number of sheets printed by each host.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As described above, according to the present invention, in a shared printer system in which a printing device is shared by a plurality of host computers, the number of sheets actually printed by each host computer can be displayed on the system according to the user's instructions. Even in a shared printer system where users of each host computer belong to different departments, it is possible to distribute the cost burden of consumables for printing devices to each user of the host computer or to each department to which the users belong. become able to.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing the configuration of one embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the configuration of another embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 3 (A)
(B) is a processing flow diagram of the system in Figure 1;
Figures (A), (B), and (C) are processing flow diagrams in the system of Figure 1. 1 (1a, 1 b, -, 1n) - Word processor, 2... Word processor body, 3... Display screen, 4... Keyboard, 5... Printer controller, 6... Laser printer engine, 7 ...printing device (laser printer), 11 (lla, llb, -
11n)...Nonvolatile memory, 51 (51a, 51
b,...51n)...Nonvolatile memory, 52...
Operation panel, 61... Mechanical counter, 201...
Print document data. 202... Notification of completion of printing of one page, 203... Notification of completion of document printing, 301... Counter value request command.

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] 1. In a shared printer system in which the same printing device is shared by a plurality of host computers, a plurality of nonvolatile storage means each storing the number of prints for each of the host computers; display means for displaying the contents of the non-volatile storage means to the user of the system, and each time printing is executed for each of the individual host computers, the corresponding contents of the storage means are counted up. A control method for a shared printer system that displays the number of printed sheets. 2. A shared printer system for displaying the number of printed sheets, characterized by being provided with the control method according to claim 1. 3. The shared printer system for displaying the number of printed sheets according to claim 2, wherein the storage means corresponding to each of the host computers is provided for each of the host computers. 4. The shared printer system for displaying the number of printed sheets according to claim 2, wherein the plurality of storage means are provided in the printing device. 5. The shared printer system for displaying the number of printed sheets according to claim 2, wherein the display means is provided in the printing device. 6. The shared printer system for displaying the number of printed sheets according to claim 2, wherein the display means is provided in the host computer. 7. A printing device characterized by being used in the system according to claim 4.