JPH07326068A - Optical information recording and reproducing device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To record the stable and corrent information at high speed by positioning plural spots on the same information track and changing over the function of at least one spot at the time of back and forth movements of the relative motion. CONSTITUTION:The state of the information track 51c right before the recording is made by the spot 62 is monitored by the spot 64. When any foreign matter or defect 56 exists, this existence is represented as variation of the light quantity attained to a photodetector 69. A signal from the photodetector 69 is transmitted to a control circuit 74 through a preamplifier 72 and a changeover circuit 73. At the time of recording operation on the information track 51c (back movement time), the monitoring on the track is made by the spot 64, meanwhile this part is performed by the spot 63 when the recording is made on the information track 51b (forth movement time). Therefore, the informations from the preamplifiers 71, 72 are selected and changed over by the changeover circuit 73 in accordance with the informations of the back and forth movements from an interface 77 then transmitted to the control circuit 74.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an optical information recording / reproducing apparatus for recording and / or reproducing information on an optical information recording medium. In particular, the present invention is suitable for an optical card recording / reproducing apparatus that records / reproduces information by relatively reciprocating the optical head and the optical card.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, various types of media such as optical disks, optical cards, and optical tapes have been known as forms of media for recording and reproducing information using light. Each of these has its own characteristics and is used depending on the purpose and application. Among them, optical cards are easy to manufacture, have good portability,
It is expected that the applications will become more and more widespread in the future by taking advantage of the features such as good accessibility.

FIG. 7 is a schematic block diagram showing an example of an optical information recording / reproducing apparatus constructed for the card-shaped recording medium.

In the figure, 1 is an optical card for recording information, 3 is an optical head (a part surrounded by a dotted line in FIG. 7), 4 is a light beam, 5 is a shuttle on which the optical card 1 is mounted, 8 Is a laser light source, and 9 is a collimator lens. Reference numeral 10 is a polarization beam splitter, and 30 is a quarter-wave plate, which allows the light traveling from the top to the bottom of the figure to be transmitted by the combination of the two members, but the light traveling from the bottom to the top is bent at a right angle. Reference numeral 11 denotes an objective lens which serves to collect parallel light on the optical card 1.

Further, 12 is an optical sensor, 13 is a preamplifier, 14 is an auto-focusing servo, 15 is an auto-tracking servo, 16 is a decoder, 17 is an interface, 18 is a computer, 19 is an encoder, 20 is a laser driver, and 21 is stepping. The motor has a function of moving the optical head 3 in a direction perpendicular to the paper surface.

Denoted at 22 and 23 are pulleys 22 and 2.
A belt 24 is attached to the belt 3. A shuttle 5 for mounting and fixing the optical card 1 is attached to the belt 24. The pulley 22 is attached to the shaft of the motor 26, and the rotation of the motor 26 causes the optical card 1 to reciprocate in the direction of arrow A in the figure.

Next, the operation of the apparatus shown in FIG. 7 will be described by taking the case of information reproduction as an example.

In FIG. 7, the light beam emitted from the laser 8 is collimated by the collimator lens 9, passes through the polarization beam splitter 10 and the quarter wavelength plate 30, and is further condensed by the objective lens 11. To form a minute spot on the optical card 1. The reflected light from the optical card 1 is modulated depending on whether or not there is an information pit in the portion irradiated by the minute spot, and this modulated light is again collimated by the objective lens 11 and incident on the optical sensor 12 by the polarization beam splitter 10. To be done. The optical sensor 12 detects a change in the amount of modulated light, converts it into an electric signal, and sends it to the preamplifier 13. A signal is sent from the preamplifier 13 to the auto-focusing servo 14, and the signal from the auto-focusing servo 14 moves the objective lens 11 in the B direction by an actuator (not shown) so that the light beam 4 focuses on the optical card 1. Thus, the distance between the objective lens 11 and the optical card 1 is controlled.

The signal from the preamplifier 13 is also sent to the auto-tracking servo 15, and the signal from the auto-tracking servo 15 moves the objective lens 11 in the direction perpendicular to the paper surface by an actuator (not shown) and 4 is controlled so as to focus on a predetermined position. In addition, during the initial operation of the device, the interface 1
A servo pull-in command is sent from 7 to the auto-focusing servo 14 and the auto-tracking servo 15. Some specific methods have been proposed for the auto-focusing servo 14 and the auto-tracking servo 15. For example, the light beam 4 is divided into a plurality of beams by a grating or the like, and the optical card 1 is pre-focused for auto-focusing or auto-focusing. There has been proposed an example in which a track for tracking is pre-formatted, information is reproduced by at least one of a plurality of light beams, and signals for autofocus and autotracking are taken out by another beam. Further, the signal from the preamplifier 13 is sent to the decoder 16 and subjected to electrical necessary processing, and then sent to the interface 17. Information signals are sent from the interface 17 to the computer 18. In addition, a signal is sent from the interface 17 to the encoder 19 and, after being modulated as necessary, the oscillation of the laser 8 is controlled via the laser driver 20.

Further, a signal is sent from the interface 17 to the stepping motor 21 and the motor servo 27, and the position control of the optical head 3 in the direction perpendicular to the paper surface and the rotation control of the motor 26 are performed.

In the optical card recording / reproducing apparatus which operates as described above, it is required that the optical card be reliable enough to record information stably and accurately. Stable recording means scratches on the surface or recording surface of an optical card,
This means that when there is a defect such as dust, it is unlikely that information will be erroneously recorded on a track other than the information track on which information should be originally recorded due to the presence of the defect. In order to meet such a demand, a means as shown in FIG. 8 has been proposed in a conventional device in which a medium such as an optical disk rotates in one direction with respect to an optical head.
In FIG. 8, reference numeral 41 is an information track, and the first spot 4 for recording / reproducing information is formed on the same information track.
2. Immediately after recording, it is determined whether or not the information recorded as the second spot 43 and the pit 46, which has a role of performing a preliminary detection of the presence of the foreign substance 44 on the information track on which information is to be written, is accurate. A third spot 45, which plays a role of reproducing, is located. Therefore, it is possible to prevent the second spot 43 from being transferred to another information track by knowing the existence and size of the defect before the recording by the second spot 43, for example, by locking the auto focusing servo and the auto tracking servo. It is possible. Further, if the information pit 46 recorded by the third spot 45 is reproduced and it is determined whether or not the recording was correctly performed, it is possible to immediately perform the correction recording on the new information track 41 in the case of erroneous writing. .

[0012]

However, when the apparatus having the structure shown in FIG. 8 is applied to an optical card recording / reproducing apparatus in which an optical head and an optical card relatively reciprocate, the recording speed is remarkably high. It has the drawback of being slow. That is, as shown in FIG. 8, when the roles of the second spot and the third spot are fixed, the recording must be performed in the forward movement (or in the backward movement). Therefore, for example, in order to record over two information tracks, the optical head and the optical card must make two reciprocations. With this, when recording a large amount of information, an inconvenient situation that the recording time is long occurs.

[0013]

The present invention has been made in view of the above problems. That is, an object of the present invention is to provide an optical card recording / reproducing apparatus capable of stably and accurately recording information without reducing the recording speed.

The above object is to provide an optical information recording / reproducing apparatus for recording and / or reproducing information while reciprocally moving a recording / reproducing head and an optical recording medium. A plurality of spots formed on the recording medium by the head are arranged so as to be located on the same track in the recording medium, and the plurality of spots are arranged in correspondence with the forward movement and the backward movement of the relative movement. Among the above spots, the functions of two spots arranged at positions sandwiching the recording and / or reproducing spots in front and back are changed, and the changed function is to reproduce the recorded information immediately after recording. This is achieved by an optical information recording / reproducing apparatus having a function of confirming and a function of detecting an abnormality on the track immediately before recording.

[0015]

The feature of the present invention is to change the function of at least one of the plurality of spots in correspondence with the scanning direction during the forward movement and the backward movement so that a spot having a predetermined function is formed. It is to make them function in a predetermined order.

For example, according to the above-mentioned example, by switching the functions of the second spot and the third spot, a preliminary investigation before recording, recording of information, and Allows confirmation operation after recording. Therefore, recording on two information tracks can be performed by one reciprocating operation, and the recording speed is doubled as compared with the conventional example.

[0017]

EXAMPLES The optical information recording / reproducing apparatus of the present invention will be described in detail below based on specific examples.

FIG. 1 is a schematic block diagram showing an example of the optical information recording / reproducing apparatus of the present invention.

The components having substantially the same functions as those of the device shown in FIG. 7 are designated by the same reference numerals, and the description thereof will be omitted.

In FIG. 1, 61 is a diffraction grating, 65 is a sensor lens, 62, 63 and 64 are light spots formed on an optical card, 66 is an optical sensor, and 67, 68 and 69.
Are light receiving parts on the optical sensor. 70, 71,
Reference numeral 72 is a preamplifier, 73 is a switching circuit for switching the function of the light spot, 74 is a control circuit, 77 is an interface, and 78 is a computer.

In the optical head 3, the parallel light flux formed by the collimator lens 9 is made into three beams by the diffraction grating 61. The three beams are imaged as three spots 62, 63 and 64 on the optical card 1 by the objective lens 11. The direction in which these three spots are arranged is parallel to the direction A in which the optical card 1 reciprocates. The reflected beam from the optical card 1 passes through the quarter-wave plate 30 and the polarization beam splitter 10 and is then condensed by the sensor lens 65 onto the optical sensor 66. The optical sensor 66 has three light receiving parts 67, 68, 69 corresponding to three beams, and converts a change in the light amount of each beam into a change in electrical characteristics. The output from each light receiving unit corresponds to the one-to-one correspondence of the preamplifiers 70, 71, 7
After being sent to No. 2 and subjected to predetermined processing, it is passed to the switching circuit 73.

Next, the operation of the switching circuit 73 and thereafter will be described with reference to FIG. 2 and FIG. FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the arrangement of light spots on the information track on the optical card. Figure 2
Information tracks 51a, 51 for recording information in
b, ..., 51f are provided parallel to the reciprocating direction A of the optical card. As described with reference to FIG. 1, the three spots 62, 63, 64 are located on the same information track 51. Information is now pit 55 on the information track 51b.
Consider the case of recording as. The three spots 62, 63, 64 formed by the diffraction grating 61 have different intensities, and at least the intensity of 62 is higher than that of 63, 64. The recording command and the recording contents from the computer 78 are transmitted to the laser driver 20 via the interface 77 and the encoder 19 to drive the laser 8 as a predetermined modulated recording signal. Information is recorded by the spot 62 on the information track 51b corresponding to the modulated recording signal. The spot 64 reads the written information immediately after recording. The output from the light receiving portion 69 corresponding to the spot 64 and the preamplifier 72 is the switching circuit 7
3 is transmitted to the decoder 16 and reproduction is performed immediately after recording, and this reproduction information is sent to the interface 77.
At the interface 77, the reproduction information is compared with the information to be originally recorded. When it is determined that the recording is not normally performed, for example, a command is issued to record again on the adjacent information track 51c.

Furthermore, since the confirmation spot 64 itself is also modulated by the recorded information,
By transmitting recording modulation information from the interface 77 to the preamplifiers 70, 71, 72 by a command (not shown), and referring to and correcting the information inside the preamplifier 72,
It is possible to obtain accurate information.

Next, the case of recording on the information track 51c in FIG. 2 will be described. Previous information track 51b
2 was recorded from left to right in FIG. 2 (tentatively named as forward movement), the next information track 51c was recorded.
Recording is performed from right to left in the figure (that is, recording is performed at the time of backward movement) in order to increase the recording speed. If a relative reciprocal relationship between the optical head 3 and the optical card 1 during normal reproduction (for example, a device that always reads information from left to right during reproduction in FIG. 2), for example, one track worth of data is recorded. It is also possible to record by reversing the sequence of information. When recording on the information track 51c, the spot 63 is used for confirmation immediately after recording. That is, the interface 77 determines whether the feeding direction of the optical card 1 is the forward movement direction or the backward movement direction, and transmits the information to the switching circuit 73. Switching circuit 73 based on this information
In (1), the signal from the preamplifier 72 is transmitted to the decoder 16 at the time of forward movement, and the signal from the preamplifier 71 is transmitted to the decoder 16 at the time of backward movement for the purpose of immediate confirmation after recording.

Further, the role of the spot 64 in recording on the information track 51c will be described. The spot 64 is the information track 51 immediately before recording by the spot 62.
The state of c is being monitored. Some foreign matter / defect 56
When there is, the existence appears as a change in the amount of light reaching the light receiving unit 69. The signal from the light receiving unit 69 is transmitted to the control circuit 74 via the preamplifier 72 and the switching circuit 73. In the control circuit 74, if the output from the switching circuit is judged to be defective by considering its size, continuous time, etc., each servo state is held in the auto focusing servo 14 and the auto tracking servo 15. Give instructions. This holding time width may be, for example, until it is confirmed that the signal from the preamplifier 72 has passed over the foreign matter 56 and returned to a predetermined level, or until a predetermined time has elapsed. As a result, the spots 62, 63, 64 can be immediately positioned on the information track 51c again. The control circuit 74 informs the interface 77 that there is a foreign substance having a great influence on the information track 51c and that the above control has been performed. Based on this signal, the interface 77 records information on the information tracks 51d again in order to record the information again on the information track 51d or assuming that the defect is larger than the width of the information track 51. In order to do so, give instructions to various places. As described above, the spot 64 monitors the track when recording on the information track 51c (during backward movement), but the spot 63 plays a role in recording on the information track 51b (during forward movement). Is. Therefore, the switching circuit 73 has the interface 77.
Based on the forward / backward information from the preamplifier 71,
The information from 72 is selected, switched, and transmitted to the control circuit 74.

As is apparent from the above description with reference to FIGS. 1 and 2, the reciprocating optical card 1 is played immediately after recording to confirm recorded information, and the information is recorded immediately before recording. Stable and accurate by setting the spot that plays the role of detecting abnormality on the track on the same information track, and by providing the function to switch these roles during forward and backward movement of the optical card. Recording of various information can be achieved without sacrificing recording speed.

Another embodiment of changing the function between a plurality of spots in the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS.

The spots painted black in FIGS. 3 to 6 have a function of performing confirmation immediately after recording. The hatched spot has a function of monitoring an abnormality on the information track 51 before recording.
Further, spots indicated by white circles are spots used for recording, autofocus, or autotracking. In each figure, recording is performed from left to right on the information track 51b and from right to left on 51c.

The embodiment shown in FIG. 3 is an example in which only the confirmation operation function is switched between the spots 63 and 64 immediately after recording. This is an example that focuses on particularly high-speed and accurate recording while attempting to simplify the circuit configuration.

In the embodiment shown in FIG. 4, the spots 63 and 64 are
This is an example in which only the monitor function before recording is switched in between. Similarly, this is an example of focusing on high-speed and stable recording while attempting to simplify the circuit configuration.

In the embodiment shown in FIG. 5, the same information track 5 is used.
This is an example in which five spots 81 to 85 are positioned on the position 1 to change the function. Since each spot has a single potential function (for example, whether or not the spots 82 and 83 operate the monitor function), the circuit configuration of the preamplifier and the like becomes simple. That is, since the spots 84 and 85 need only have a confirmation operation function, and the spots 82 and 83 need only have a monitor function, a switching circuit for that purpose is unnecessary and the circuit configuration is simple.

In the embodiment shown in FIG. 6, the spots 82, 8
While switching between the confirmation function and the monitor function between 3,
During forward movement (on the information track 51b), spot 84 performs auto-tracking, and spot 85 performs auto-focusing, and during backward movement (information track 51c).
In the upper part, the spot 85 performs auto-tracking and the spot 84 performs auto-focusing.

In the above embodiments, the confirmation function and the monitor function are mainly illustrated as the switching function, but the function is not necessarily limited to this, and the preheating function for giving preheating immediately before recording is performed. It is also possible to use spots of various functions corresponding to various recording media and methods such as.

Further, although the position of the recording spot is not changed in the above-mentioned embodiment, if the predetermined configuration such as the arrangement adjustment of the optical sensor and the pluralization is adopted, the recording spot of the embodiment shown in FIGS. It can also be configured.

FIG. 9 shows a structure in which the structure shown in FIG. 3 can be realized by two beam spots 90 and 91, and the recording beam spot and the confirmation beam spot are interchanged depending on the scanning direction. It is easily understood that the method of this embodiment can be similarly applied to the monitor function shown in FIG.

FIG. 10 is a diagram showing a structure having both a monitor function and a confirmation function.
There are 5 spots of 4 and the forward movement (information track 51
In (b), information is recorded by spot 101,
During the backward movement (on the information track 51c), the spot 103 is used.

The present invention has advantages not only in recording but also in reproducing. For example, when reproduction is performed during each of the forward and backward movements, the speed of reproduction can be increased by switching the roles of the scratch monitor light before and after the reproduction light.

Although a diffraction grating is used as a means for generating a plurality of light beams in the above embodiment, a plurality of lasers 8 may be installed. Alternatively, a laser array contained in a single chip may be used. Further, although specific methods of autofocus and autotracking have not been mentioned, astigmatism autofocus and push-pull autotracking using the recording spot 62 are possible, for example, and other methods are also applicable.

[0039]

As described above, according to the optical information recording / reproducing apparatus of the present invention, the information recording / reproducing is performed while the recording / reproducing head and the recording medium relatively reciprocate. In this optical information recording / reproducing apparatus, a plurality of spots are positioned on the same information track, and the function of at least one spot is switched at the time of the forward movement and the backward movement of the relative movement, thereby the recording / reproducing apparatus. It is possible to cause the spots of the roles corresponding to the above to function in a predetermined order, and it is possible to perform stable and accurate information recording at high speed.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a configuration of an optical card recording / reproducing apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram showing spots on a card for explaining the embodiment in detail.

FIG. 3 is a diagram for explaining another embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a diagram for explaining another embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a diagram for explaining another embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a diagram for explaining another embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a diagram showing a configuration and a spot arrangement of a conventional device.

FIG. 8 is a diagram showing a configuration and spot arrangement of a conventional device.

FIG. 9 is a diagram for explaining another embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 10 is a diagram for explaining another embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 optical card 3 optical head 66 optical sensor 67, 68, 69 light receiving part 70, 71, 72 preamplifier 73 switching circuit 74 control circuit 77 interface 78 computer

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. An optical information recording / reproducing apparatus for recording and / or reproducing information while reciprocally moving a recording and / or reproducing head and an optical recording medium, wherein the recording medium is recorded by the head. A plurality of spots formed on the recording medium are arranged so as to be located on the same track, and the plurality of spots among the plurality of spots correspond to forward and backward movements of the reciprocating motion, The function of the two spots arranged at the positions sandwiching the recording and / or reproducing spots is changed, and the changed function is a function of performing reproduction immediately after recording and confirming recorded information. An optical information recording / reproducing apparatus having a function of detecting an abnormality on the track immediately before recording. 2. The optical information recording / reproducing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the optical recording medium is an optical card.