International Business Machines Corporation

Richard M Morrison

Chris Karabatsos

Harry Cheselka

Gerald J Hladik

Lawrence G Mosher

Michael J Stember

Edward J Wendell

Garrison Q Kenney

James F Buckley

A remote fan out facility used in an information handling system including a plurality of data terminals located remotely from a central processor unit. Messages transmitted from the central processing unit to one of the plurality of data terminals are modified by creating and inserting a terminal device address into the outbound messages. The messages are then transmitted to a fan out box located near the addressed terminal. The fan out box strips the terminal address from the received message, decodes the stripped address, and directs the message to the appropriate data terminal according to the stripped decoded address. By this means, a single serial transmission link can be used to connect the central processing unit to a plurality of data terminals without undue modification of an existing system.

Remote fan out facility for data terminals

A terminal controller system is described wherein several feature cards are plugged into slots on a board, and I/O signal cables are connected between cards and/or remote multiplexors or terminals. A special purpose card identification (ID) bus is driven by the feature cards and received by an ID adapter. The ID adapter has one select line running to each of the slots on the board. The ID adapter enables the select lines one at a time, whereby the selected feature cards drive their IDs onto the ID bus. A processor records the slot population by ID and also can analyze the IDs to determine if a valid configuration exists. The processor then performs a wrap test on each of its ports. This test alters the ID which it wraps and by comparison with the IDs recorded originally, this enables the processor to logically establish the physical link to particular cards connected to the ports.

Terminal system configuration tracing method and apparatus

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Lake Katrine, NY, United States of America

Richard M Morrison