Olympus Optical Company, Ltd.

Olympus Corporation

Takumi Sugaya

Takao Rokutan

Mitsuo Oshiba

Naoaki Tani

Takefumi Sakurada

Toshihiro Kitahara

Hiroshi Hashi

Fujio Kosaka

Katsunori Kumai

Akira Shirai

Kaori Ichikawa

In discharge recovery processing, a continuous sheetis moved from a facing position facing a head portionto a first position (in the down direction in the drawing) as an evacuating position in the discharge recovery processing, thereafter, a discharge recovery processing unitin the standby mode at a second position (in the up direction in the drawing) different from the facing position is moved to the facing position, and the discharge recovery processing is performed. In the discharge recovery processing, the head unitis not moved and therefore the preferable positional reproducibility is obtained after ending the discharge recovery processing.

Image forming apparatus

A printer system includes a host computer, K, C, M, and Y printer elements for four colors, a paper feeding section, and a head cleaning section. The printer elements each include a head controller and print head groups. The head controllers are connected to the host computer via SCSI interfaces in a daisy chain. When printing, the host computer transfers information, such as an image-printing region, image-printing data, to the head controllers via the SCSI interfaces, thereby executing image printing. The printer system can control a large number of print heads with a simple configuration and also can perform high-accuracy image printing.

Printer system which uses a plurality of print heads and which controls the print heads with a simple configuration to achieve high accuracy image printing

A demodulation device for use with an optical recording medium comprises an edge detector for detecting edges of a binary signal corresponding to marks written onto the optical recording medium as information, an edge interval measuring circuit for measuring a value for the interval between two successive edges detected by the edge detector, a storage device for storing a table that relates thresholds representing upper and lower limits on at least one of a length of the mark and an interval between the marks to demodulated bit strings, and a data converter for comparing an edge interval value obtained by the edge interval measuring circuit with the thresholds representing upper and lower limits to thereby determine one of corresponding a length of the mark and an interval between marks and obtain a demodulated bit string corresponding to the edge interval value measured from the table.

Optical recording medium reproducing apparatus using edge detecting

In an optical card recording/reproducing apparatus having a multi-track read type optical head in which a reproducing light beam is radiated on a plurality of tracks on an optical card having a large number of tracks parallel to each other so as to cause a plurality of reproducing light-receiving elements to simultaneously reproduce data of the plurality of tracks on which the reproducing light beam is radiated, the light beam is moved such that the maximum or minimum address of addresses of the tracks irradiated by the light beam is located at the target track. After one multi-track reproduction is performed, the light beam is moved by the distance corresponding to the number of multi-tracks.

Optical recording/reproducing apparatus capable of multi-track access

An optical information recording and reproducing apparatus comprising a first and a second laser diodes for generating recording light and reproducing light, respectively. A light emission condition of the second laser diode is always controlled to the constant or predetermined light intensity which is adequate for reproduction, by an APC circuit. The first laser diode is controlled by a light-intensity control circuit so as to be brought to the intensity of light emission lower than a level which forms a pit on an optical card, in a reproducing mode other than a period of time of a recording mode. Under a focus and tracking control due to the reproducing light, a value of a focus error and a value of a tracking error due to the recording light at a low level are detected and sampled/held as a focus offset and a tracking offset. During a period of time of the recoding mode, focus control and tracking control due to the reproducing light are performed so that these offsets are brought to zero.

Optical information recording and reproducing apparatus in which

In an optical card recording/reproducing apparatus having a multi-track read type optical head in which a reproducing light beam is radiated on a plurality of tracks on an optical card having a large number of tracks parallel to each other so as to cause a plurality of reproducing light-receiving elements to simultaneously reproduce data of the plurality of tracks on which the reproducing light beam is radiated, when the light beam is to be moved to a target track to be reproduced, the maximum value of an error to be caused during moving the optical head is subtracted from a difference between a current track and the target track so as to determine a moving amount, or when an error generated during the movement of the optical head is represented by .+-.G, and the number of light-receiving elements is set to be 2G+1 or more, any one of the light-receiving elements can be located on the target track by moving the optical head once.

An optical information recording/reproducing device is constituted of a focus control circuit connected to a controller, a tracking control circuit, a data processing circuit, and a card feed control circuit. The data processing circuit includes a plurality of I/V converters for converting signals received by a plurality of signal reproducing light receiving elements arranged to an optical detector into current/voltage, and a plurality of binary circuits each for converting the output from the I/V converters into a binary signal in a reference level. The data processing circuit includes a selector for selecting at least two outputs of a plurality of binary circuits. The data processing circuit includes a plurality of bit-clock producing circuits and a plurality of demodulation circuits. The bit-clock producing circuits produce bit clocks based on binary signals originated from selectors and a plurality of binary circuits which are not connected to the selectors. The demodulation circuits executes sampling the two binary signals in accordance with bit clocks and executes data demodulation using the sampled results. The data processing circuit includes a plurality of memories storing demodulated results from the plurality of demodulation circuits.

Optical information recording/reproducing device which simultaneously

In an optical card reproducing apparatus, the data of a front ID portion is read, and whether a track address can be identified is determined. If the track address cannot be identified, a flag is reset, and the data of a data portion is read. If the track address can be identified, whether the identified track address coincides with a target track address is determined. If they do not coincide, the operation is ended. If they coincide, the flag is set, and the data of the data portion is read. After the data read from the data portion is stored in a buffer memory, whether the flag is set is determined. If the flag is set, data in the buffer memory is output as the data of the target track. If the flag is reset, the data of a rear ID portion is read, and whether the track address is identified is determined. If the track address cannot be identified, the buffer memory is cleared, and the operation is ended. If the track address can be identified, whether the identified track address coincides with the target track address is determined. If they do not coincide, the buffer memory is cleared, and the operation is ended. If they coincide, data in the buffer memory is output as the data of the target track.

Apparatus and method for reproducing information data from optical cards

According to the optical information recording/reproducing device of the present invention, upon recording of information, when a pit image on an optical detector which is formed by a recording optical beam spot at an information recording time arrives at a position of a O-order diffraction light spot image, while an optical card is moving in the forward direction, a light receiving element for signal reproducing senses a change in light amount. A verify signal is obtained immediately after recording based on the light amount change to perform a verify operation. Further, when a pit image on the optical detector formed by the recording optical spot arrives at a position of the image of the primary diffraction optical spot while a moving direction of the optical card is reversed and the optical card moves in the reverse direction to perform recording, a signal reproducing light receiving element senses a change in light amount. A verify signal is obtained immediately after recording based on the light amount change to perform a verify operation. Since irradiation is made in which the space between the recording optical spot and the O-order diffraction light spot is made equal to the space between the recording optical spot and the primary diffraction light spot b, an optical detector can receive the verify signal at the same timing even if the optical card moves in the forward or reverse direction.

Optical information recording/reproducing device capable of recording

An optical information recording/regenerating apparatus includes an optical head for irradiating a regeneration light spot to a plurality of tracks on an optical recording medium simultaneously via an objective optical system. A regenerating arrangement is provided for simultaneously scanning the plurality of tracks to which the optical head has irradiated the regeneration light spot, and then reading recorded information from the plurality of tracks. An error-correcting arrangement is provided which receives the recorded information read by the regenerating arrangement for performing error correction using the error-correcting codes for the plurality of tracks. An error-correction result memory arrangement is provided for storing results that indicate whether or not the error-correcting arrangement succeeded in error correction. A control arrangement is responsive to results stored in the error-correction result memory which indicate that error correction has not succeeded for the information regenerated from at least one track among the information regenerated from the plurality of simultaneously-scanned tracks. A driving device drives the regeneration light spot and the optical recording medium relatively to each other. The control arrangement controls the drive device so that the track for which the error correction has not succeeded will be included in a scanning range.

Optical information recording/regenerating apparatus and track scanning

A beam-spot control unit is arranged such that a light beam is irradiated onto an optical recording medium having a plurality of tracks, through an objective lens, to detect reflecting light of beam spots formed on the tracks by three or more photo detecting elements which are arranged in a direction corresponding to a track transverse direction. From a tracking error signal which is generated by a difference signal of pairs of photo detecting elements which are selected by a selecting switch from these photo detecting elements, a control signal is generated which positions the beam spots to a plurality of recording lines within a single track. A tracking control mechanism is utilized to enable positioning of the beam spots to a plurality of recording lines within the single track to be performed.

Optical information recording/reproducing apparatus for performing

A CMD (change moduation device) control circuit in an optical card reproducing apparatus comprises a data interval detector which detects a data pit interval from a binary valued signal from a binary value converter and from a row and a column addresses generated by a row address generator and a column address generator, respectively, during scanning of a CMD sensor with a row address generator and a column address generator, a track guide column address detector for detecting a column address of a track guide from the binary valued signal by scanning the CMD sensor, and a decoder for decoding a recorded data from the data pit intervals detected by the data interval detector. In this optical card reproducing apparatus, the decoding is carried out directly from the recorded data pit intervals without moving the optical card during the reproducing operation. Thus, accurate decoding or reproducing of the data can be achieved.

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Hachioji, Japan

Takumi Sugaya