International Business Machines Corporation

John L Regehr

Lee Anton Sendelbach

Peter J Mendel

Mark David Hagen

Phillip C Schloss

Ronald L Soderstrom

Gerald M Heiling

Larry W Nicholson

LaVerne F Knappe

James M Thompson

Randall John Fuhrman

Kenneth K Gerzsenyi

Anthony E Farrell

Dennis L Reese

Albert E Schierhorst

A system backplane has a pair of dual purpose connectors and a system bus controller. A shared resource card has a pair of connectors and a shared resource, such as memory. In an entry level system, the connectors on the shared resource card mate with the dual purpose connectors on the system backplane, connecting a system bus from the system bus controller to the shared resource. There are no unused expansion slots on the backplane. To form an advanced level system, an expansion backplane having mating connectors is inserted between the system backplane and the shared resource card. The expansion backplane allows the system bus to pass through from the system backplane to the shared resource card. The expansion backplane has an expansion bus controller, an expansion bus, and expansion slots. The expansion bus is connected to the expansion bus controller and to the expansion slots. The expansion bus is also connected to the shared resource on the shared resource card. The shared resource card also has a bus interface, which connects the expansion bus to the system bus. In an alternative embodiment, the expansion bus controller and the bus interface are contained on the system backplane instead of on the expansion backplane and the share shared resource card, respectively. The system backplane also contains a limited number of expansion slots.

Flexible entry level or advanced level computer system

A CRT display having a rotatable display face for presenting data in a vertical and horizontal orientation is disclosed. The reorientation of the CRT face causes activation of the switches that control the electronic logic to reorient the data and present the data properly on the face of the CRT.

Rotatable display work station

Image rotate control circuitry buffers one column of display or video data which is subsequently printed along a horizontal print line. A video dot counter cycles each horizontal scan line while a print line counter cycles each vertical scan. Video data is entered into the buffer when the count in the video dot counter equals the count in the print line counter. After one refresh of the display the buffer contains one print line of data. This data is shifted from the buffer to the printer during the vertical retrace or vertical blank period of the display. The control circuitry sends a strobe signal to the printer for the print operation as a new column of data is being buffered during the next refresh of the display.

Image rotate control circuitry

A porcelain glazed metal bar has a rounded edge carrying a line of deposited print elements. Conductive lands deposited on both sides of the glazed bar connect the print elements to contacts for external circuitry.

Thermal print head having glazed metal substrate

A line printer attachment for converting a display screen copier printer to a line printer. The last or extra line of the display is used as the line print buffer. An initiate print signal is generated upon detecting that the last or extra line is to be scanned. The initiate print signal is used to blank or inhibit the serial video data from the display screen and to enable the printer. The serial video data is constantly sent to the printer attachment but is ignored until the printer is enabled. With the printer enabled, printing takes place using the line print buffer data which has been serialized as serial video data. The print buffer data remains unchanged during the entire printing of the line where the printing is done in series of horizontal lines to complete the printing of a line. At the end of each horizontal line of print a vertical screen retrace occurs and the display screen is swept where again the last or extra line is detected and another initiate print signal is generated. The next horizontal line of the series of horizontal lines for completing a line of print is printed and the operation repeats until an entire line of printing is completed.

Line printer attachment

A convenient hard copy output of a cathode ray tube (CRT) screen display is provided by a thermal printer which prints a line of dots equal in number to the number of dots in one raster scan on the CRT screen by printing the serial digital information in one such raster scan, as generated by the display device prior to incorporation into a composite video signal, during each refresh cycle of the screen until the entire screen content has been reproduced. Use of one line during each refresh cycle enables the reproduction of the screen content by gating the serial data from the display control circuitry without the need for a separate character generator or the related circuitry and also accommodates the use of an interlaced raster.

Non impact display screen output printer

A non-impact thermal printer is formed using a pivoted stiffner-frame on which is mounted a printed circuit card-print head assembly. The card is slotted with the print heads mounted at the distal ends of the cantilevered portions to enable close compliance between print head read/write units and the print media through the torsional resilience of the circuit card cantilevered portions. Compact, simple structure is provided by having the printer control circuitry mounted on the same printed circuit card.

Thermal printer write head assembly

The specification shows and describes a visual display of the CRT variety wherein column separator lines may be displayed intermediate character matrix positions as an operator aid. The visual column separators further do not require that any character position be used or encroached upon and where limited spacing occurs between character forming dot matrices, logic delays may be utilized in the video modify circuitry to displace the separator line and thereby visually distinguish such separator line from any adjoining character.

Growing community of inventors

Stewartville, MN, United States of America

John L Regehr