The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 10, 1991
Filed:
Oct. 30, 1989
Thomas A Gregg, Highland, NY (US);
Leon Skarshinski, Red Hook, NY (US);
International Business Machines Corp., Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
An apparatus and method for transmitting commands over a serial link having a switch intermediate a channel and a control unit wherein continuous sequences of idle characters (K.28.5) are sent over the link for maintaining character synchronization. Commands and response information is sent between ports of the switch and the channel and/or the control unit by modifying every other idle character to a modified idle character to which a command or response function has been assigned. In the modification, a selected number of the bits of the idle character are held invariant, and only those bits are varied which form data characters according to the rules of the 8B/10B encoding method. Code points for a total of 124 modified idle characters are disclosed to which a separate command or response may be assigned.