Error alarm system for detecting an abnormal condition in a peripheral system of an electronic cash register

Claim 1

A combined electronic cash register and peripheral system comprising: an electronic cash register; and peripheral means electrically interconnected to said cash register via a cable for monitoring a desired external condition as well as abnormal conditions of said peripheral means; said electronic cash register including, interface means responsive to the output of said peripheral means on said cable for decoding said information provided thereon and supplying said information to a plurality of outputs, one of said plurality of outputs being an external condition value output, the remainder of said outputs being abnormal conditions monitor outputs, abnormal condition evaluation means connected to at least one of said abnormal condition monitor outputs for determining whether an abnormal condition exists and producing an abnormal condition detection output associated with the abnormal condition detected, abnormal condition display signal generator means responsive to said associated abnormal condition detection output for developing a display signal indicative of said abnormal condition, means responsive to the display signal produced by said display signal generator means for visually displaying said display signal, a plurality of audible condition memories, each said memory being associated with one of said abnormal condition monitor outputs and having a speech synthesized representation of the associated abnormal condition stored therein, means for decoding the speech synthesized representation stored in a selected said memory into an analog audio waveform, means responsive to a said associated abnormal condition detection output for enabling the passage of the speech synthesized representation stored in a selected said memory to said means for decoding, and transducer means responsive to said means for decoding for producing an audible speech representation of said abnormal condition.