Patent ID: 7059699

Claim:
A printing apparatus for printing by forming ink dots on a print medium, the printing apparatus comprising: an ink tank mount; a print head having a plurality of nozzles for ejecting ink and a plurality of drive elements for actuating the plurality of nozzles; a plurality of ink tanks detachably supported in the ink tank mount and each of the plurality of ink tanks having a memory, each of the plurality of memories storing ink type data representing an ink type contained in each of the plurality of ink tanks, at least one memory among the plurality of memories storing drive waveform data suitable for the type of ink contained in the ink tank having the at least one memory and drive waveform data suitable for all types of the ink contained in the plurality of ink tanks; a memory read unit configured to read out the drive waveform data from the at least one memory; and a drive signal generator configured to generate a drive signal based on the drive waveform data, wherein the drive signal generator is configured to select one of the plurality of drive waveform data in response to the ink type data read out from each of the plurality of memories, and if all the read out ink type data represents a common ink type then to select the drive waveform data suitable for the common ink type, while if the read out ink type data represents a plurality of ink types then to select the drive waveform data suitable for each of the plurality of ink types.