Patent ID: 8746821

Claim:
A print control device for a printing apparatus that is equipped with a plurality of print control devices, which are allocated with and control printing units on the basis of print data from a host control unit, and is equipped with a driving control unit that controls driving of mechanical printing mechanisms on the basis of commands from the print control devices, the print control device comprising: an information receiving unit that receives state information transmitted from the driving control unit at periodic or non-periodic time intervals and stores the state information in a storage unit; a response unit that, upon receiving an information acquisition command from the host control unit, responds by transmitting state information stored in the storage unit to the host control unit; an input unit that inputs a first command; a command generating unit that generates a second command inside the print control device; a management unit that manages first and second commands in the order in which the commands were acquired and outputs the first and second commands in the order in which the commands were acquired; an output unit that outputs the commands received from the management unit to the driving control unit; a synchronizing unit that, upon confirming that the same command is present in the respective output units of the plurality of print control devices, allows the output units to output the command, and an avoidance unit that performs avoidance processing to avoid an error that occurs in the synchronizing unit when the second command is not present in the respective output units of all of the plurality of print control devices; wherein the information acquisition command is not input to the management unit.