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:
Apr. 21, 1998
Filed:
Dec. 19, 1995
David T DeRoo, St. Joseph, MI (US);
Mark D Nicol, Stevensville, MI (US);
Michael P Krau, Benton Harbor, MI (US);
Packard Bell NEC, Sacramento, CA (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus providing alternate access to standard ports to enable the functionality of such standard ports to be expanded without the need to provide additional software or hardware while obviating the problem that any non-standard commands will be ignored. All standard commands are written to the standard ports. However, any non-standardized commands are written to the standardized ports by way of an alternate access path. In particular, the non-standardized commands are written to an index register and a value register at non-standardized port addresses. The value written to the index register selects one of a predetermined group of index registers, while the value register is used for data for the register selected by the index register. By including standardized port addresses, such as 60H and 64H in the group of index registers, non-standardized commands can be written to these ports by way of the index register to enable non-standardized commands to be assigned to such standardized ports.