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:
Jul. 17, 2001
Filed:
Jan. 04, 1999
Jack J. McCauley, Danville, CA (US);
Other;
Abstract
A method and an apparatus to interface multiple peripheral devices to a host computer is provided. An interface control module located in a multi-user computer game arcade system interfaces a host computer via a Universal Serial Bus (USB) to one or more joysticks, steering wheels, trackballs, coin op/bill counters, credit card readers and/or optical guns. A set of connectors allows the game builder or player to interface a variety of input peripherals to the interface control module. The interface control module recognizes the HID type of the input peripheral by the type of the selected connector, and then provides HD reports that describe each input device to the HID compliant software system of the host computer. The interface control module may support 127 HID peripherals. A watchdog function of the interface control module detects host computer malfunctions and crashes, and boots the host computer while retaining coin credit input data received proximate to and during the malfunction and recovery.