JPS6118378B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a fault display method that clearly displays the type of hard error or soft error in a terminal on the terminal to facilitate repair.

Even if a normal terminal device stops operating due to an error, it does not leave a record of the error on the terminal side, so even if maintenance personnel come to the terminal, they will not be able to find out the cause of the error, and if the operator does not report it, it will simply be They are forced to find the cause of the failure and repair it without much effort. For example, if we take a printer as an example, the errors include soft errors such as parity errors, synchronization errors, and time overs, and hard errors such as printing errors, suction/exhaust mechanism errors, speed irregularities, and fan stoppage. When such an error occurs, the terminal sends an ``abnormal end'' to the controller instead of the ``normal end'' that would occur if normal printing was performed. However, that's all there is to it, so from the terminal controller's perspective, even if the write data is sent, the abnormal end will simply return, and from the terminal's perspective, the printing operation will stop and the printing will just be "stuck". Therefore, in order to repair the problem, maintenance personnel must go to both the terminal side and the controller side, and investigate the cause of the error while contacting the controller side from the terminal side by telephone. The cause of the error can sometimes be found by looking at the terminal controller's memory, but if the terminal is reset during the repair operation, the controller's memory is also erased and the cause of the error becomes completely unknown.

The present invention attempts to facilitate repair by leaving the type of error in a separate memory area when an error occurs and displaying it on the terminal side during the reset process. A terminal device connected to a controller having a data transmitting/receiving section and a response sorting section, which is provided with a signal sending section in response to received data and a means for displaying information from the controller, and is provided with a signal transmitting section in response to received data and a means for displaying information from the controller. When receiving the intermittent fault information stored in the memory of the controller by sending the fault information to the controller and storing it in the memory, and sending a reset signal to the controller, the intermittent fault information is displayed on the display section. It is at the point where it is displayed. This will be explained in detail below with reference to the illustrated embodiments.

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of the system. TE ₁ and TE ₂ are terminals, and TC is a terminal controller, which is connected between a host computer (not shown) and the terminal to perform data editing, checking, and other functions. The controller TC includes various circuits and memories necessary to perform the above functions, but in the present invention, in addition to these, a memory section MEM that is not erased by reset is provided, and when the abnormal end returns, error information ( type).

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating the operation of the present invention using an example when a printing error occurs in the terminal _TE1 . Controller TC terminals write data WD
It is transferred to TE ₁ , and if it is output normally on terminal TE ₁ , the normal end NE is returned. Then, the next write data is sent, and when the normal end returns, the next write data is sent again, and this process is repeated. However, even if I send the write data WD, the terminal
If an error occurs in the printing structure in TE ₁ , the terminal will not be able to print the data normally, so it will return Abnormal End AE and notify the contents of the error. When the controller TC receives an abnormal end, it separates it in a weaving part (not shown), transfers the notified error details to the error storage part MEM that corresponds to the terminal number, and thereafter writes it to the terminal TE ₁ . Stop sending write data WD.

After that, when the operator performs reset processing (or initialization) on the terminal TE ₁ side, the signal RST
(This is the same as powering on) Controller TC
The controller TC separates this reset signal from the terminal machine number, initializes the working memory assigned to the corresponding machine number, for example, the memory used as a data buffer, and at the same time, the power-on program runs and the initialization is performed. Send text data INIT. In the present invention, at this time, the error information AE in the error storage unit MEM is simultaneously read out, and this is sent to the terminal as data ERR indicating the type of error.
Send it to the TE ₁ side and print the error type 2 following the initial text 1. In this way, there will be no problem even if the operator performs a reset process, and if the error is temporary, the terminal TE ₁ and the controller
It will be restored immediately during TC. Also, if the error is permanent, repair work by maintenance personnel is required, but if the fault is other than the printing mechanism,
Maintenance personnel can see the error information printed out following the initial message to determine the cause of the failure and take appropriate measures.

Note that after printing the initial character, the printer performs a line feed and prints the transmission data from the new line.
Therefore, there is no particular problem even if error information is printed. Furthermore, sensors for various hard errors are installed on the printer side, and when an error occurs, the sensor generates an output and reports the type of failure to the terminal controller accordingly. The same applies to soft errors. Note that some types of soft errors, such as parity errors, can be detected in the channel section of the terminal controller, so they are detected by that section and written to the storage section MEM.

As described in detail above, according to the present invention, error information is displayed on the terminal side by printing or the like following the initial message so that the operator can understand it, so it has the advantage of being extremely convenient for troubleshooting. A method of recording error information on the host CPU may be considered, but this method has disadvantages such as increasing the burden on the host CPU and requiring operations to request the host CPU to transmit error information to the terminal. However, the method of the present invention has the advantage that error information is displayed on the terminal during normal reset processing.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

1 and 2 are diagrams showing one embodiment of the present invention, in which FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of the system, and FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram of printer error operation. In the figure, TE ₁ is a terminal, TC is a terminal controller, and MEM is a storage unit.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1 A terminal connected to a controller having a data transmitting/receiving section and a response signal discriminating section, which is equipped with a signal transmitting section in response to received data and a means for displaying information from the controller, and is equipped with a means for displaying information from the controller, When a fault occurs, the fault information is sent to the controller to be stored in the memory, and when the intermittent fault information stored in the memory of the controller is received by sending a reset signal to the controller,
An intermittent failure display method for a terminal, characterized in that the intermittent failure information is displayed on the display unit.