PURPOSE: To attain the start of a terminal equipment of an information processor in a simple and quick way by selecting automatically the starting method in response to the state of connection to a host processor and the state of an auxiliary memory of the terminal device.

CONSTITUTION: When a terminal equipment is energized, a microprocessor 5 starts execution of a bootstrap routine recorded to an ROM6. A host processor is connected to a communication terminal and also actuated. Under such conditions, a control program is transferred to a random access memory device 7 from the host processor via a communication device 1. In case no host processor is connected to the communication terminal or the host processor has no its actuation although it is connected to the communication terminal, the control program is transferred to the memory 7 from an auxiliary memory 2. When the transfer is through with the control program, the terminal equipment is started in response to the control program.