JPH0635635A - Image forming device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To automatically execute switching of emulation and selection of a print condition, in the image forming device using an SCSI as a host interface. CONSTITUTION:Different logical unit numbers(LUN) are allocated to plural emulations, and when the LUN is determined by an instruction from an initiator (host device) 5 on an SCSI bus 16, the emulsion designated thereby is actuated. Also, various designated print conditions are stored in a nonvolatile memory 10 as plural pieces of table information including each item, and by allowing each table information thereof to correspond to the LUN, when the LUN is determined by the instruction from the initiator on the SCSI bus 16, the print condition designated thereby is set.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus such as a printer connected to a SCSI bus.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art As shown in, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 1-140221, arbitrary emulation can be selected for each of a plurality of host interfaces, and processing can be performed independently for each host interface to be used at the same time. There is such a printer control device.

Further, as shown in, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 1-258968, a printer control device in which emulation is switched by a command sent from a host, or as disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2-113323. There is also a printer control device that has an identification code for each host and can set a mode corresponding to each identification code. Furthermore, for example, JP-A-3-247478.
As disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. JP-A-2003-242, there is also one in which each print condition is stored as a plurality of table information in a non-volatile memory and a corresponding print condition (mode) can be selected by operating a switch.

On the other hand, in recent years, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2-166511.
As can be seen in Japanese Patent Publication, S for high-speed data transfer
There is an increasing number of cases in which various devices including a host computer and a printer are connected and used by using a CSI (Small Computer System Interface) as shown in FIG. Therefore, some devices such as printers have SCSI as the image forming device itself.

[0005]

However, the SCS
In the image forming apparatus using the I, if only SCSI is used instead of the parallel interface or serial interface that has been used as a standard host interface until now, there is only a merit that the data transfer can be performed at high speed, and the usability is improved. In terms of, nothing changed. That is, it has been impossible to freely switch emulation and select print conditions as described in the above-mentioned publications.

The present invention has been made in view of the above points, and in an image forming apparatus using SCSI as a host interface, the emulation is automatically switched or the print is automatically performed as necessary without the user's being aware. The purpose of the present invention is to enable selection of conditions and to give a situation as if a plurality of types of image forming apparatuses are connected.

[0007]

To achieve the above object, the present invention is connected to a SCSI bus, receives print data or control data from an initiator on the SCSI bus, converts the data into image data, and prints the image data. The output image forming apparatus has a plurality of emulations, and a different logical
The unit number is assigned.

Further, there are provided a means for designating the print condition and a means for storing various print conditions designated by the means in the nonvolatile memory as a plurality of table information including respective items, and the non-volatile memory is provided by the means. Property information stored in the logical memory
An image forming apparatus corresponding to the number is also provided. It should be noted that the print condition may include at least designation of emulation.

[0009]

According to the image forming apparatus of claim 1, by assigning different logical unit numbers to a plurality of emulations, the logical unit number is instructed by an initiator (for example, a host device) on the SCSI bus. When you decide, you can activate the emulation specified by it. Therefore, there is no need for the user to perform an emulation switching operation on the host or panel device.

According to the image forming apparatus of the second aspect, various specified print conditions are stored in the nonvolatile memory as a plurality of table information including each item, and each table information is stored in the logical unit number. When the logical unit number is determined by an instruction from the initiator on the SCSI bus, the printing condition designated by the logical unit number can be set. Therefore, the user does not need to perform an operation for setting print conditions on the host or panel device. If the print conditions include emulation designation,
It is very convenient because you can automatically switch to emulation that is most suitable for the set print conditions and start it.

[0011]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT An embodiment of the present invention will be specifically described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a laser printer showing an embodiment of the present invention, which comprises a printer controller 1, a printer engine 2 and a panel device 3. The host device 5 is a host device of this printer.

The printer controller 1 includes a CPU 6, a program ROM 7, a font ROM 8, a RAM 9, and an NV.
A RAM 10, an IC card 11, an engine interface (the interface is abbreviated as I / F hereinafter) 12, a panel I / F 13, and an SCSII / F15 I / F.

The CPU 6 is a central processing unit that controls the printer controller 1 as a whole according to a program from the program ROM 7, a mode instruction from the panel device 3, and a command from the host device (host computer) 5. The program ROM 7 is a read-only memory that stores the control program of the printer controller 1, and the font ROM 8 is a read-only memory that stores font pattern data and the like.

The RAM 9 is a work memory for the CPU 6,
Used as an input buffer for storing input data, a page buffer for storing page data, a bitmap buffer for storing image image data (bitmap data), a font file for storing downloaded fonts, etc. Random access
Memory (internal memory).

The NVRAM 10 is a non-volatile memory for storing the contents of the mode instruction from the panel device 3, and the IC card 11 is a removable memory card used when externally supplying font data and programs. Is. The engine I / F 12 is an interface for communicating commands, status and print data with the printer engine 2 that actually prints, and a panel I / F.
F13 is an interface that communicates commands and statuses with the panel device 3 that informs the user of the current printer status and gives a mode instruction.

The SCSII / F15 and the host device 5 and S
It is a host interface that performs communication via the CSI bus 16. Communication between the initiator and target is SC
This is the basic interface operation in SI. In this case, the host device 5 is the initiator and the printer controller 1 is the target. The timer 17 measures time.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram functionally showing this embodiment, which is an SC including a SCSI controller 21, a SCSI manager 22, and a target processing unit 23.
SII / F15 and printer controller 1 excluding it
And a data processing unit 25 including the printer engine 2 (print processing unit).

The SCSI controller 21 is for connecting the laser printer to the SCSI bus 16, and a dedicated LSI is used. SCSI manager 2
Reference numeral 2 controls the SCSI controller 21 to manage the input / output of phases, commands, status messages and the like.

The target processing unit 23 operates when the laser printer operates as a target, and controls the processing when it operates in response to a print request from the host device 5 which is usually an initiator. It also has the role of determining the LUN (logical unit number) and passing it to the data processing unit 25. The data processing unit 25 analyzes the data received from the target processing unit 23 and performs various processes such as printing process, command process, and reply process.

Next, the operation of this embodiment thus constructed will be specifically described. The laser printer of this embodiment has three types of emulations, as shown in Table 1, and different L for each emulation.
It is assumed that UN is assigned.

[0021]

[Table 1]

First, when the power is turned on, as shown in FIG.
CPU 6 activates a predetermined default emulation. Here, emulation A is assumed. In addition, a variable (act_emul) for discriminating the currently activated emulation is prepared, and the LUN (0) of the default emulation A is input as an initial value. Furthermore, a variable (print_flag) for determining whether or not printing is in progress is also prepared.

FIG. 1 is a flow chart showing the processing according to the present invention according to this embodiment.
When the entify message or the command descriptor block (CDB) is input, the target processing unit 23 of FIG. 3 starts this routine, first compares the LUN designated by the input and the variable (act_emul), and both of them are compared. If they are the same, the process proceeds to command (CDB) processing.
That is, if the command can be accepted, the data processing unit 2
The command is transferred to 5 and the command processing of FIG. 4 is executed.

On the other hand, the specified LUN and variable (act_emu
If l) is different, the variable (print_flag) is checked, and if it is false, the emulation specified by the LUN is started and the specified LUN is changed by the variable (act_em
ul), the process moves to the command processing of FIG. If the variable (print_flag) is true, Identi
The "BUSY" status is returned to the host device that sent the fy message or command descriptor block (CDB). That is, a print request or the like from another host device cannot be accepted by returning the "BUSY" status.

FIG. 4 is a flow chart showing a subroutine of the command processing of FIG. 1, in which the data processing unit 25 receives a print command (print command).
If it is not a print command, various other command processing is performed. If it is a print command, the variable (print_flag) is set to true, and then the print command is processed.

FIG. 5 is a flow chart showing another processing according to the present invention according to this embodiment. Incidentally, in association with this flow, it is assumed that various modes including the mode (print condition) shown in FIG. 6B are stored in the NVRAM 10 as a plurality of table information including each item. The mode shown in FIG. 6B corresponds to the LUN1 shown in FIG. 5 is different from FIG. 1 in that the mode designated by the LUN is read from the NVRAM 10 and set.

FIG. 7 is a flow chart showing still another process according to the present invention according to this embodiment, which is a combination of the processes of FIGS. 1 and 5 described above. The comparison between the current emulation and the emulation specified by the LUN is made by referring to the contents of the last item as shown in FIG.

Although the embodiment in which the present invention is applied to the laser printer has been described above, the present invention is not limited to this, and other optical printers such as an LED printer and a liquid crystal shutter printer, as well as various kinds of digital copying machines and the like. Can be applied to the image forming apparatus.

[0029]

As described above, the image forming apparatus using SCSI as the host interface according to the present invention can not only perform data transfer at high speed, but also automatically when necessary without the user's awareness. You can switch the emulation and select the required print conditions.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a flowchart showing a process according to the present invention according to the embodiment of FIG.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a laser printer showing an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram functionally showing the embodiment of FIG.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing a subroutine of command processing of FIG.

5 is a flowchart showing another processing according to the present invention according to the embodiment of FIG.

FIG. 6 is an explanatory diagram showing a relationship between a LUN and modes in this embodiment.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart showing still another processing according to the present invention according to the embodiment of FIG.

FIG. 8 is a block diagram showing an example of a system using SCSI.

[Explanation of symbols]

1 Printer Controller 2 Printer Engine 3 Panel Device 5 Host Device 6 Central Processing Unit (CPU) 7 Program R
OM 8 Font ROM 9 RAM 10 NVRAM 15 SCSII
/ F 16 SCSI bus 17 Timer 21 SCSI controller 22 SCSI manager 23 Target processing unit 25 Data processing unit

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. An image forming apparatus which is connected to a SCSI bus, receives print data or control data from an initiator on the SCSI bus, converts the data into image data, and prints out the image data. An image forming apparatus characterized in that a different logical unit number is assigned to each emulation. 2. An image forming apparatus which is connected to a SCSI bus, receives print data or control data from an initiator on the SCSI bus, converts the data into image data and prints out the image data, and means for designating print conditions. Means for storing various print conditions designated by the means in the nonvolatile memory as a plurality of table information including each item, and each table information stored in the nonvolatile memory by the means An image forming apparatus characterized in that it corresponds to a unit number. 3. The image forming apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the print conditions include at least designation of emulation.