A central drive system for a nonmechanical printing or copying device such as a photocopier has a central drive system with one motor which is subdivided into a main drive system with high precision for driving elements requiring a high degree of synchronization and a subsystem with less precision for driving elements requiring a lesser degree of synchronization. The main drive system drives the photoconductor drum, the slide scanning roller and a feed crawler in the paper transport unit. The subsystem drives a cleaning brush, the developer roller and mixing screws in the developer station.