The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Feb. 22, 2000
Filed:
Apr. 24, 1998
Patrick Oscar Bischel, Paris, KY (US);
John Knox Brown, III, Lexington, KY (US);
Kathy Scott D'Alessandro, Georgetown, KY (US);
Edward William Yohon, Jr, Lexington, KY (US);
Lexmark International, Inc., Lexington, KY (US);
Abstract
A printing apparatus and method of use therefore are disclosed. The printing apparatus is usable as a replacement printer for replacing an existing printer apparatus without having to change printer drivers or make custom firmware changes in computers on a computer network. The inventive printer apparatus includes a map of source number assignments in the memory of the replacement printer apparatus for the replaced existing printer apparatus and for the replacement printer apparatus. The printing apparatus has a plurality of paper sources with each paper source being assigned a particular pre-assigned assignment code. The print request codes associated with the existing network printer being replaced must be determined. The print request codes are representative of a particular type of paper source. A map of print request codes which are sent by computers on the network for driving the existing printer are compared with the pre-assigned source number assignment of the replacement printer. If the pre-assigned source number assignment is different for any of the paper sources than the print request code, a user can change the source number assignment to agree with the print request code. These changes are placed into a table into the non-volatile memory of the printer, thereby creating a mapping of source number assignments for the new replacement printer, the old printer being replaced, and the custom firmware. The pre-assigned source number assignments can be changed using either NPA commands, the printing apparatus operations panel or using printer job language (PJL).