International Business Machines Corporation

Siemens Business Communication Systems, Inc.

Rolm Company

David C Black

Gary R Key

Elie Antoun Jreij

John C Krause

Michael G Duncan

Larry A Stell

Joel Q Adams

Tave P Dunn

Robert D Whittington

Timothy L Wilson

William E Levene

Norman Endick

Michael K Kounnas

William F Dunn, Jr

James B Koehler

Diep N Le

Gordon D Leak

Gautam Biswas

A method and apparatus for connecting remote options to a digital telephone base. Physical and communications protocols for connections and a flexible control scheme which can be as simple or elaborate as a given option requires are provided. The digital telephone includes an option bay connection, having a hierarchical control protocol. The option bay connection makes available several types of information, including: local analog audio, analog voice, digital voice, digital data and telephone control streams.

Option bus

A telephone includes means for switching the LEDs, on the face of the phone, between a normal operating mode in which the lights indicate the status of telephony features, such as mute or hold, to a diagnostic operating mode in which the LEDs indicate the status of the telephone's data communications signals. The modes are toggled by entry of a code on the telephone keypad or by way of a command from a workstation coupled to the telephone by way of a data communications port.

Data diagnostics with leds on the face of a telephone

Method for determining the baud rate of a data stream by comparison of captured data to known autobaud characters. Samples are received from the communication device and stored in memory until a set of the samples are accumulated. Then, a sample clock is divided in half and the odd numbered samples are compared to a set of known autobaud characters. If a match occurs, then the sample clock is assumed to be correctly synchronized with the incoming serial data stream. If a match does not occur, then the even samples are recirculated and eight more samples are collected. The sample clock is again divided in half and the odd numbered samples are compared to the set of known autobaud characters. If a match occurs, then the sample clock is assumed to be correctly synchronized with the incoming data stream. These steps are repeated until an autobaud character match is found or an error situation is determined.

Automatic baud rate detection

A dynamically configurable telephone 10 has an intelligent controller 42 which implements a communication protocol to receive commands and parameters and to transmit status indicative of particular phone features. Upon receipt of the parameters, the controller translates the parameters into configuration settings for the telephone and also stores the parameters in a non-volatile memory 44 if such is installed. The telephone accommodates many different country-specific requirements without hardware or firmware changes being made to the phone itself. The controller returns solicited or unsolicited status messages, or events, to a PABX 14 over a bit serial digital data link 12. An event can be indicative of error conditions, such as data packet errors, timeouts, or data storage errors. An event can also be a reply to a previously received command, such as configuration status, internal test results, a phone serial number or a controller firmware revision level.

Dynamically configurable telephone

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Austin, TX, United States of America

David C Black