Sony Corporation

Sony Trans Com Inc.

Dilip C Shah

Michael R Atkinson

James Bruce Whitehouse

Kaz Takata

Kouwei Shen

A communication subsystem used in an aircraft entertainment system employs a microcontroller and a dual-ported RAM to relieve burden from the host processor in handling low-level operations in communicating with external devices. The host processor and the microcontroller accesses the dual-ported RAM by testing the semaphore to determine if the DPRAM is available. If available, the processor and/or the microcontroller will read/write the messages from/to the DPRAM as appropriate. The microcontroller controls the communication interface controllers directly and will send messages read from the DPRAM to the CICs or write to the DPRAM messages received from the CICs without host processor's intervention. The microcontroller also performs other low-level operations such as header/trailer processing and error checking/correcting free from the host processor.

Efficient message processing using a multi-ported RAM and a dedicated

The interrupt regenerator circuit converts the transition signal caused by a passenger's data entry in an aircraft entertainment system into a triggering signal. The triggering signal triggers a delay element consisting of cascadable one-shot devices. The timing intervals for the outputs of these one-shot devices are programmable through the selection of proper values for the resistors and capacitors. The interrupt signal is de-asserted by the host processor when the host processor responds to the interrupt. The delayed interrupt signal is then gated by the interrupt signal itself to regenerate the interrupt signal to the host processor.

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Laguna Hills, CA, United States of America

Dilip C Shah