PURPOSE: To reduce greatly the cost of a ribbon feeder by eliminating the needs for the use of an exclusive drive source by a method in which a gear is engaged with a scale groove as a rack in a linear pulse motor, and the gear is turned as a carrier moves to drive the ribbon feeder system of a ribbon cassette.

CONSTITUTION: When a carrier 10 moves to the left side, a gear 22 engaging with the groove 17b of a scale 17 is counterclockwise turned on the right end of a side-long hole 26. In this case, the rotation of the gear 22 is transmitted through the first transmission gear 23 to the second transmission gear 27, and the gear 27 is turned counterclockwise to cause a ribbon feed roller to turn in the same direction, thereby sending out a ribbon. When the carrier 10 moves to the right side, the gear 22 is turned clockwise on the left end of the hole 26, where the rotation of the gear 22 is directly transmitted to the second transmission gear 27 without the gear 23. The gear 27 is then turned counterclockwise and the ribbon is sent out in the same direction.