Patent ID: 8393695

Claim:
A thermal printer for printing by applying heat energy to a recording medium, comprising: a plurality of heating elements for applying heat energy to the recording medium; a heating element drive circuit for driving each heating element among the plurality of heating elements; and a drive control circuit for supplying drive signals to each heating element drive circuit based on pixel printing data from an external source, wherein the drive control circuit comprises: a line buffer unit for accumulating current dot printing data; a shift register unit for obtaining the current dot printing data and previous dot history data from the line buffer unit and sending the current dot printing data and the previous dot history data to a logic circuit unit; and a configuration storage unit for changeably storing pattern values corresponding to a plurality of supply patterns, the configuration storage unit comprising a configuration register comprised of a plurality of registers each storing a respective one of the pattern values the configuration register being configured to change the pattern values; wherein the logic circuit unit is configured to change or update logic operations applied to the pixel printing data according to the pattern values in the plurality of registers, and change the drive signals to track the plurality of supply patterns.