Lsi Logic Corporation

Ncr Corporation

Kenneth J Thompson

Raymond S Rowhuff

Mahmoud K Jibbe

Barry E Caldwell

Craig C McCombs

Brian Eric Lamkin

A method and apparatus for maintaining automatic termination of a bus in the event of failure of a host computer are disclosed. The method includes the steps of (a) powering a first termination control circuit and a first terminating circuit of the first bus controller with the bus; (b) generating a first control signal (1) that is of an enable state if the first bus controller is located at an end of the bus, and (2) that is of a disable state if the first bus controller is located in a middle portion of the bus; (c) coupling the first terminating circuit to the bus if the first control signal is of the enable state; and (d) decoupling the first terminating circuit from the bus if the first control signal is of the disable state.

Method and apparatus for maintaining automatic termination of a bus in

A method and apparatus for providing automatic termination of cables coupled to an adapter card is described. The presence or absence of devices attached to such cables are sensed. A terminator circuit is selectively activated to provide termination for the cables depending on the configuration of devices attached to the adapter card. In one embodiment, a plurality of dissimilar types of devices having different data widths are attached to a common adapter card via a plurality of cables. The cables provide for interconnection of devices to the adapter card via a bus protocol. The signals to/from the cables are sourced/sinked from a controller chip. A terminator circuit in close proximity to the controller chip is selectively activated to provide termination for the host side of the bus, depending on the types of devices attached to the bus.

Method and apparatus for terminating busses having different widths

A disk array controller including a data path architecture which can be configured to perform data transfer operations between a host system and a plurality of disk drives configured as a RAID level 1, 3, 4 of 5 disk array. The data path architecture includes a plurality of array channels for coupling selected disk drives with a host system bus and circuitry for generating parity information during write operations. Each array channel includes a data bus connected through bus drivers to the host bus, its associated disk drive, and the input and output of the parity generation circuitry. The bus drivers control the placement of data unto the array busses and the direction of the data flow on the array busses. In addition to performing data transfer operations and generating parity information the data path architecture can be configured to check parity information, recover lost data, reconstruct disk drives, monitor data transfer operations, verify data transfer operations and broadcast information to several disk drives.

Growing community of inventors

Wichita, KS, United States of America

Kenneth J Thompson