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:
Oct. 31, 1995
Filed:
Apr. 23, 1993
Bruce A Thompson, Highlands Ranch, CO (US);
David J Van Maren, Ft. Collins, CO (US);
John G McCarthy, Thornton, CO (US);
R Andrew Purcell, Ft. Collins, CO (US);
Michael Rottinghaus, Greeley, CO (US);
Hewlett-Packard Company, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
A Transparent Peripheral File System (TPFS) includes a Peripheral File System Adapter (PFSA) which communicates with a host operating system at the vnode level of file operation by packaging such communications for transmission over an I/O system interface, such as SCSI. A file peripheral system remote from the host and in a peripheral relation thereto is responsive to the PFSA, without an intervening file server. The peripheral file system produces hardware commands for the mass storage device whose space it manages. The peripheral file system may be embedded in a mass storage device, a lump in the interconnecting interface cable, or a smart interface card in the backplane of the host. The peripheral file system may include a daisy chain connection to allow the propagation of vnode communication to other peripheral file systems. In this way a hierarchy of peripheral file systems may be physically mounted to one another in a way that corresponds to how they are logically mounted. A Character To File Translator (CFX) allows a TPFS to emulate raw mode access, even if the host system is not equipped with a vnode file operation interface. CFX does this by converting to and from streams of characters communicated with an application using this ersatz raw mode, while instead of storing the data on the storage medium itself, actually relying upon the remote peripheral file system for storing, or having stored, the streams of characters as a file.