Patent ID: 6969140

Claim:
A printer, to which an ink cartridge is detachably attached, said ink cartridge keeping ink therein and having a rewritable non-volatile memory, said printer causing the ink kept in the ink cartridge to be transferred from a print head mounted on said printer to a printing medium, thereby implementing a printing operation, said printer comprising: a printer memory that stores information relating to the ink kept in said ink cartridge into a predetermined area thereof in a predetermined format of addressing, which is different from a serial format of addressing for forwarding the information to the cartridge to store in said non-volatile memory, at least some of the information forwarded from the printer to the cartridge reflecting an ink property that changes as the printer is operated; a memory writing unit that reads the information relating to the ink kept in the ink cartridge from the predetermined area and writes the read-out information into a specific area of the non-volatile memory, which corresponds to the predetermined area of said printer memory; and an address decoder that converts a storage format of addressing of the information relating to the ink from the predetermined format of addressing into the serial format of addressing when said memory writing unit writes the information.