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:
Mar. 09, 1999
Filed:
Aug. 29, 1996
Michael Atkinson, Irvine, CA (US);
Dilip C Shah, Laguna Hills, CA (US);
James Whitehouse, Brea, CA (US);
Kouwei Shen, Newport Coast, CA (US);
Sony Corporation, Tokyo, JP;
Sony Trans Com, Inc., Irvine, CA (US);
Abstract
A communication subsystem used in an aircraft entertainment system employs a microcontroller and a dual-ported RAM to relieve burden from the host processor in handling low-level operations in communicating with external devices. The host processor and the microcontroller accesses the dual-ported RAM by testing the semaphore to determine if the DPRAM is available. If available, the processor and/or the microcontroller will read/write the messages from/to the DPRAM as appropriate. The microcontroller controls the communication interface controllers directly and will send messages read from the DPRAM to the CICs or write to the DPRAM messages received from the CICs without host processor's intervention. The microcontroller also performs other low-level operations such as header/trailer processing and error checking/correcting free from the host processor.