A method and system of communicating with a computer through a network prior to booting the computer's operating system or after operating system failure is provided. A multitasking kernel is implemented in a network enhanced BIOS. External references in a NIC device driver are resolved to reference services provided by the network enhanced BIOS. A workstation coupled to the computer through a network may be used to access and set status on the computer prior to loading the operating system or after operating system failure. The multitasking kernel may be operated simultaneously with a conventional BIOS. The computer may be further provided with a means for alerting the workstation in the event of a POST failure or operating system crash.

Network enhanced BIOS enabling remote management of a computer without a functioning operating system

A system for selection by a user and delivery to the user of selected audio data files at a delivery rate of 2-100 times the delivery rate for normal, audibly perceptible playback of an audio data file. The user registers the user's selection of audio material with a central library of data files and a digitized and compressed omnibus file containing the user's selections is prepared and transmitted to the user at a high data transfer rate. The user receives downloads the omnibus file to a removable, high density diskette or PCMCIA card that may hold ten Mbytes! Megabytes to one Gbyte! Gigabyte of digitized text or audio data, using a removable hard drive or its equivalent and a universal data interface that recognized and compensates for omnibus files received in any of a plurality of input signal formats. The user carries this diskette or PCMCIA card until the user has an opportunity to decompress and play back the text or audio data files in audibly perceptible form. The central library contains either text files or audio data files in digitized compressed format. An audio data file may include E-mail messages, from which the system strips the routing information for more convenient playback by the user.

Enhanced delivery of audio data

A method applicable to a host computer system having a system bus connected to a CPU, and a PCMCIA controller having status registers, means for supplying back off signals to the CPU and line buffers capable of being in a normal and high impedance state A multi pin connector is located in each card socket and connected to a line buffer Each connector has common address, data and control pins, power pins, ground pins longer than the data pins and card detect signal pins shorter than the signal pins The first step is to detect the commencement of an insertion or removal of a PCMCIA card to or from a socket by monitoring the ground and card detect signal pins After detection, commence termination of all CPU usage of common address, data and control lines by asserting a back off signal Next, determine if the usage is terminated by monitoring the status registers in the controller Next, place the common address, data and control lines in a high impedance state Next, detect that the PC card has been completely inserted or removed by monitoring the ground pins or the card detect signal pins Next, apply power to the PCMCIA card socket After a delay return the common address, data and control lines to their normal operating impedance level

Automatic computer card insertion and removal algorithm

Device drivers for removable system resources are configured dynamically in a computer system having a processor, a system memory and an interface for receiving removable system resources (generally denoted feature cards). A feature card has a card memory area which stores a device driver for controlling the feature card. The feature card device driver is separated into two parts: 1) a full device driver portion, and 2) a stub device driver portion. The full device driver provides all of the device driver functionality necessary to control each and every function of the feature card. The device driver stub is a small compact portion of processing logic for linking the full device driver with operating system software located in the computer system. A fixed amount of system memory RAM is set aside at bootstrap initialization to contain the device driver stubs. Device driver stubs corresponding to removed cards remain resident in system memory until a device driver stub cannot be loaded because the system memory set aside for device driver stubs has been filled. At that time, enough of the system memory set aside for device driver stubs is reclaimed to permit the desired device driver stub to be loaded. Therefore, by allocating enough space in computer system memory to contain every device driver stub required by the system at a given time, and by reclaiming system memory occupied by removed card device driver stubs as the system memory is needed, one can avoid having to periodically reset the system by performing a bootstrap initialization procedure.

System for enabling access to device driver residing in resource memory corresponding to coupled resource by allowing memory mapping to device driver to be executed

System and method for performing monitoring of resources in a data processing system in real time

A device driver system comprises a core that manages the specific functions of a plurality of I/O devices. The core includes an operating system interface that is generic to different operating systems. An operating system has a device driver interface that is unique to the operating system. A conversion program is layered between the core and the operating system for converting communications between the device driver interface of the operating system and the generic operating system interface of the core. The core includes a channel manager including a request dispatcher, request queues, a command initiator, and a plurality of state machines corresponding to state machine in the I/O devices. A transport layer interfaces between the hardware and the channel manager.

Edward Mitchell Tuggle

Papers

Device driver system having generic operating system interface