| 摘要 |
PURPOSE: A technique is provided which is applicable to a printer and a cartridge attached thereto and enables information relating to the cartridge, such as pieces of information on remaining quantities of inks or toners, to be adequately processed, while not increasing the manufacturing cost of the cartridge CONSTITUTION: An EEPROM that carries out sequential access and has a small storage capacity is applied for storage element mounted on both black and color ink cartridges. Data relating to each ink cartridge, for example, data on remaining quantities of respective inks in the ink cartridge, are stored as 8-bit data in the storage element of the ink cartridge. A print controller incorporated in the printer has an EEPROM, in which the data relating to the ink cartridges are stored as 32-bit data are used for the subsequent processing. In the case of replacement of one ink cartridge with another, on the other hand, the 8-bit data are used for the subsequent processing. This arrangement enables the data relating to the ink cartridges, for example, the data on the remaining quantities of the respective inks in the ink cartridges to be processed accurately even when a storage unit of a small storage capacity is applied for the storage elements mounted on the ink cartridges.
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