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AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorsJeremy Paul Cahill, Andrew John Thornton, Jonathan Vines Smith
Estimating the term…
A system and method to facilitate communication between an associated bus, such as employs a standard bus protocol, and a connector to which a removable SFF device can be attached. A desired operating mode is selected based on the device attached at the connector, such as either to pass the protocol between the bus and device generally unchanged or to implement suitable protocol conversion for such communication. Thus, by configuring the SFF device to appear as device currently supported by the bus, the SFF device can operate at the connector with native operating system support.
A system to facilitate operation of a small form factor device that is removably attached at a connector, comprising:
A system to facilitate use of an existing bus by one of a plurality of removable devices implementing at least two different bus protocols, each one of the plurality of devices adapted to expose itself to the bus as a type of device native to the existing bus, the system comprising:
A system to facilitate use of a small form factor device that is removably attachable to a connector, comprising:
A method for connecting a small form factor device with an internal bus that employs a predetermined protocol, the method comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.
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From the US filing history. Foreign family members aren’t listed.
Program control for peripheral devices: where the program performs an interfacing function, e.g. device driver
Device-to-bus coupling: electrical coupling
Computing and data processing
Term ended 4 Nov 2023 (estimated)
The present invention relates generally to detection of hardware and, more particularly, to a system and method to facilitate use of small form factor devices.
Small form factor (SFF) media are rapidly gaining popularity for use in connection with various consumer devices. For example, consumer devices, such as personal computers (PCs), handheld computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs) etc., often integrate removable (or pluggable) media products, including Compact Flash, ATA Flash, Memory Stick (e.g., from Sony), Secure Digital (SD), and Multimedia Card (MMC). Such media devices are useful tools for downloading music files from a PC to a portable audio player, or transferring pictures from a digital camera to the PC. In addition to media products, various SFF devices have been (and continually are being) developed for communications applications (wired and wireless), pointing devices, as well as other applications intended to augment functionality of a computing device.
As SFF devices and media increase in popularity, vendors and manufacturers of such products continually look for opportunities to extend the use of the integrated removable memory slot and interface logic in devices from strictly storage to general purpose I/O, and to integrate slots for these devices into mobile PCs. Extending the use of these components, for example, would create an accessory market for SFF devices and media form factors in accessories, such as modems, network adapter cards, Bluetooth transceivers, and fingerprint readers, to name a few examples.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an example of a system for connecting a device with a bus in accordance with an aspect of the present invention.
FIG. 2 is an example of an interface system in accordance with an aspect of the present invention.
FIG. 3 is an example of an interface system implemented in accordance with an aspect of the present invention.
The present invention relates to communication between an associated bus, such as employs a standard bus protocol, and a connector to which a removable SFF device can be attached. The system is operative to select a desired operating mode, such as either to pass the protocol between the bus and device unchanged or to implement a suitable protocol conversion, based on the device attached at the connector. Thus, by configuring the SFF device to appear as device currently supported by the bus, the SFF device can operate at the connector with native operating system support in accordance with an aspect of the present invention.
FIG. 1 depicts a selection system 10 connected between a bus 12 and a connector 14 in accordance with an aspect of the present invention. The bus 12 can be any communications system implementing a bus protocol supported in a computer or other microprocessor based machine, schematically indicated at 16. For example, the bus 12 can implement a universal serial bus (USB) protocol, such as USB version 1.1 or 2.0. It is to be understood and appreciated that other bus protocols also could employed in accordance with an aspect of the present invention, including, IEEE 1394, IEEE 1284, and so forth. While the benefits of the present invention are equally applicable to parallel and serial bus topologies, those skilled in the art will appreciate that serial buses generally require fewer physical connections and often are well suited for smaller computing devices.
The selection system 10 is programmed and/or configured to implement at least two different interface modes based on which type of removable device 18 is coupled at the connector 14. Each of the modes results in a connection between the connector 14 and the bus 12. For example, the selection system 10 can implement a native mode that passes standard bus protocols unchanged between the bus 12 and the connected device 18. To enable use of various different types of devices at the connector 14, the removable device 18 is configured to appear to as a device that is supported by the bus 12.