Importance

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Abstract

A method for controlling a printer having a plurality of print engines and a print engine controller includes the steps of: (a) coupling each of the print engines to a corresponding print engine communication device; (b) coupling together the print engine communication devices and the print engine controller in a daisy chain configuration with a serial data link, the data-output port of the printer controller being directly coupled by the serial data link to a first one of the print engine communication devices and the data-input port of the printer controller being directly coupled by the serial data link to a last one of the print engine communication devices; (c) embedding commands and data in a data stream by the printer controller and transmitting the data stream on the serial data link to the first print engine communication device by the printer controller; (d) relaying the data stream from the first print engine communication device back to the serial data link by the first print engine controller; (e) receiving the data stream from the serial data link by the last print engine communication device; (f) relaying the data stream from the last print engine communication device back to the serial data link by the last print engine controller; and (g) receiving the data stream back from the serial data link by the printer controller. Preferably, one of the first and last print engine communication devices performs the steps of extracting a command from the data stream and executing the command; and in the course of executing the command, it performs the steps of extracting bitmap data from the data stream and placing the bitmap data in a memory storage buffer coupled to a video data input port on the corresponding print engine. The method may also include the step of transmitting a message from the one print engine communication device to the print engine controller over the data link, where the message indicates that its memory storage buffer is ready to receive additional bitmap data, thereby allowing the print engine controller to be able to perform on-demand dispatching of the bitmap data to the print engines.

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First Claim