Patent ID: 6866367

Claim:
A printer apparatus comprising: a carriage supported for movement in a fast scan direction of printing on a receiver medium, the carriage supporting a printhead for recording information on the receiver medium, the printhead having a plurality of recording elements; first electronic circuitry mounted on the carriage for bi-directional movement with the carriage; an optical data link for providing to the first electronic circuitry image data signals for recording by the printhead; second electronic circuitry located remotely from the carriage and coupled to the first electronic circuitry by the optical data link, the second electronic circuitry providing multiplexed image data signals for transmission to the optical data link; and wherein the second electronic circuitry includes a multiplexer for multiplexing image data signals for transmission to the optical data link and the first electronic circuitry includes a demultiplexer for demultiplexing the image data signals, and wherein the multiplexer employs time division multiplexing to multiplex the image data signals.