Interface device and information processing system provided with same

Abstract

There is disclosed an interface device which can prevent the freezing of an information processing system caused occupation of a system bus even when a wait signal outputted from the PC card is kept asserted. When the wait signal outputted from the PC card, is asserted, a timer portion 201 is activated. When the timer portion 201 detects that the wait signal is kept asserted for more than a predetermined period of time, it asserts a wait mask signal. Upon assertion of the wait mask signal, a mask portion 202 masks the wait signal from the PC card so that the wait signal to the CPU is negated even when the wait signal is kept asserted. Further, when the timer portion 201 asserts the wait mask signal, an interrupt control block/card status register 210 asserts an interrupt signal to the CPU.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.