Texas Instruments Corporation

Burke S Henehan

Merril Ray Newman

Robert G Gugel

James M Skidmore

A system and process are disclosed for automatically resuming data communication using an IEEE-1394 PHY when communication is suspended because input bias is momentarily lost. The PHY determines whether data communication is suspended due to the PHY being disconnected from a network by checking the status of a connected flag. If the connected flag is still set to TRUE, the PHY was not intentionally disconnected from the network and it automatically attempts to resume communication by setting a resume flag to TRUE. The invention finds application in any type of communication device using the IEEE-1394 high-speed serial bus standard including audio and video sources, which may readily be connected to a personal computer for data storage or editing. The system and process may be implemented using software code and included within a digital signal processor (DSP).

Automatic resume from suspend for IEEE-1394 PHY

A system includes a serial bus , at least a first portion of which is formed on a circuit board. A first physical layer controller is coupled to the first portion of serial bus . This physical layer controller includes a register set with a plurality of eight-bit registers addressable by four-bit addresses. In this device, at least one of the seventh or eighth bits of the 0010 register is permanently programmed with a logical &ldquo;1&rdquo;. This physical layer controller is also backward compatible with a physical layer controller that conforms with IEEE-Std-1394-1995. The system also includes another physical layer controller , which may or may not be the same as physical layer controller , link layer controllers and and at least one processor (or controller)

Backplane physical layer controller

An IEEE 1394 serial bus ( ) is interfaced utilizing a physical layer ( ) to extract the data and a link/transaction layer controller ( ) to interface the data from the physical layer ( ) to a host system. The host system consists of a peripheral device ( ) which is interfaced with various host buses ( ). The link/transaction layer controller ( ) is operable to emulate the microcontroller function such that addresses can be transmitted to the peripheral device ( ) along with data, such that a remote node can access the peripheral device ( ) by transmitting address and data information thereto. Alternatively, address and data information can be transmitted from the peripheral device ( ) to the controller ( ) which will process the received address and data and transmit it to a remote node.

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Dallas, TX, United States of America

Burke S Henehan