Patent ID: 6298403
Filing Date: 2001-10-02
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
An adapter for transferring data between a peripheral bus coupled to a peripheral device and a computer bus coupled to a system memory inside a personal computer, the adapter circuit comprising:a data transfer module coupled to the peripheral bus; anda host interface module coupled to the computer bus, the host interface module being also coupled to the data transfer module for transfer of the data between the peripheral bus and the computer bus, the host interface module including:an address register for holding an address signal indicative of a location in the system memory;a count register for holding a count signal indicative of the amount of data to be transferred from the system memory;a restart memory, to recover from an interrupt, connected to the address register and the count register, having a plurality of groups of storage elements, each group of storage elements including an address storage element and a count storage element; wherein:the host interface module stores a value of an address in the address register, and stores a value of a count in the count register when storing data from the location in system memory, the value in the address register and the value in the count register changing during receipt of data; andthe host interface module copies the values from the address register into the address storage element of a selected one of the groups, and from the count register into the count storage element in the selected group always at the beginning of the transfer of data, the values being used to identify data to be transferred from a processor.