Patent ID: 7706701

Claim:
An image forming apparatus comprising: an apparatus main body including a mounting portion mounted with a plurality of toner cartridges equipped with respective non-volatile memories storing a variety of information items; a toner-cartridge mounting panel capable of being opened/closed without suspending an image forming operation when a toner cartridge of the plurality of toner cartridges is mounted in the mounting portion of the apparatus main body; a main-body memory for storing a variety of information items; a detection portion for detecting an opened/closed status of the toner-cartridge mounting panel; a retrieval portion for retrieving only cartridge-specific information from the non-volatile memories of the plurality of toner cartridges every time the opened/closed status of the toner-cartridge mounting panel is detected by the detection portion; a comparator for comparing the cartridge-specific information retrieved by the retrieval portion with cartridge-specific information stored in the main-body memory; a data reading portion for reading out other data from the non-volatile memory of the toner cartridge in response to the cartridge-specific information being determined, by the comparator, to be different from the cartridge-specific information stored in the main-body memory; and a writing portion for storing the other data read out by the data reading portion in the main-body memory every time the other data is read out by the data reading portion in response to the cartridge-specific information being determined, by the comparator, to be different from the cartridge-specific information stored in the main-body memory.