Printer and ink cartridge attached thereto

A printer, to which a cartridge is detachably attached, said cartridge keeping ink therein and having a rewritable non-volatile memory, said printer causing the ink kept in said cartridge to be transferred from a plurality of dot-forming elements, which are formed on a print head mounted on said printer, to a printing medium by a unit of dot, thereby implementing a printing operation, said printer comprising:

• a printer memory that stores information relating to the ink kept in said cartridge into a predetermined area thereof;
• a data registration unit that is disposed on a carriage, which has said print head mounted thereon and moves forward and backward relative to said printing medium, and temporarily registers therein the information relating to the ink, which is read from the predetermined area of said printer memory;
• and
• a memory writing unit that writes the information temporarily registered in said data registration unit into a specific area of said non-volatile memory, which corresponds to the predetermined area of said printer memory.

A method of writing information relating to ink kept in a cartridge into a rewritable non-volatile memory incorporated in said cartridge, which is detachably attached to a printer, said printer causing the ink kept in said cartridge to be transferred from a print head mounted on said printer to a printing medium, thereby implementing a printing operation, said method comprising the steps of:

• storing the information relating to the ink kept in said cartridge into a predetermined area of a printer memory incorporated in said printer in a predetermined format of addressing, which is different from a specific format of addressing adopted in said non-volatile memory;
• reading the information relating to the ink kept in said cartridge from the predetermined area;
• converting a storage format of addressing of the information relating to the ink from the predetermined format of addressing into the specific format of addressing;
• and
• writing the information in the converted specific format of addressing into a specific area of said non-volatile memory, which corresponds to the predetermined area of said printer memory.

A method of writing information relating to ink kept in a cartridge into a rewritable non-volatile memory incorporated in said cartridge, which is detachably attached to a printer, said printer causing the ink kept in said cartridge to be transferred from a plurality of dot-forming elements, which are formed on a print head mounted on said printer, to a printing medium by a unit of dot, thereby implementing a printing operation, said method comprising the steps of:

• storing the information relating to the ink kept in said cartridge into a predetermined area of a printer memory incorporated in said printer;
• temporarily storing the information relating to the ink, which is read from the predetermined area of said printer memory, into a temporary memory that is disposed on a carriage, which has said print head mounted thereon and moves forward and backward relative to said printing medium;
• and
• writing the information temporarily stored in said temporary memory into a specific area of said non-volatile memory, which corresponds to the predetermined area of said printer memory.

A cartridge that keeps ink therein and is detachably attached to a printer with a print head, said printer causing the ink kept in said cartridge to be transferred from said print head to a printing medium by a unit of dot, thereby implementing a printing operation, said cartridge comprising:

• a rewritable non-volatile memory;
• an input unit that receives information relating to ink kept in said cartridge, which has been stored in a predetermined format of addressing in a predetermined area of a printer memory incorporated in said printer, in a specific format of addressing that is different from the predetermined format of addressing;
• and
• a writing controller that writes the information into said non-volatile memory in the specific format of addressing received by said input unit.

A cartridge that keeps ink therein and is detachably attached to a carriage set on a printer, said printer having a plurality of dot-forming elements formed on a print head mounted on said carriage that moves forward and backward relative to a printing medium, said printer causing the ink kept in said cartridge to be transferred from the plurality of dot-forming elements on said print head to said printing medium by a unit of dot, thereby implementing a printing operation, said cartridge comprising:

• a rewritable non-volatile memory;
• an input unit that receives information relating to ink kept in said cartridge, which has been stored in a predetermined format of addressing in a temporary memory mounted on said carriage for temporarily storing information, in a specific format of addressing that is different from the predetermined format of addressing;
• and
• a writing controller that writes the information into said non-volatile memory in the specific format of addressing received by said input unit.