Patent ID: 7086709

Claim:
A print engine controller for a pagewidth printhead having at least one fixed printhead chip that spans an expansive print area of a page, the controller being connectable to a memory device, a micro-processor and the, or each, printhead chip, the controller comprising control circuitry for permitting external clients to read and write registers and to read and write to the memory device; a data bus that is connectable to the memory device; a data interface that is connected to the data bus to be interposed between the data bus and the microprocessor, in use, so that the microprocessor can write data to the memory device; a serial interface that is connected to the data bus to be interposed between the data bus and the micro-processor, in use, so that the micro-processor can access the registers of the control circuitry and registers of the memory device; page expansion circuitry that is connected to the data bus and is configured to receive data representing compressed pages and to render that data into dot data representing dots; formatting circuitry that is connected to the data bus for receiving the dot data and for formatting the dot data for printing; and a printhead interface that is interposed between the formatting circuitry and the printhead chips, in use, to receive the dot data from the formatting circuitry and to communicate the dot data to the printhead chips for printing along the span of the expansive print area.