Patent ID: 7774511

Claim:
A bus architecture, comprising: at least one signal line; and a legacy device having I/O pins selected ones of which are connected to the at least one signal line and no initialization pins; a plurality of client devices wherein each of the client devices includes, a number of I/O pins selected ones of which are connected to the at least one signal line, and a first and a second initialization pin wherein all but a first of the plurality of client devices are connected to one another in a daisy chain arrangement by way of the first and the second initialization pin separate from the at least one signal line wherein the at least one signal line is connected to a host computer, wherein the first client device is connected to the daisy chain arrangement only by way of the second initialization pin and wherein the first initialization pin of the first device is not connected directly to the host computer and is independently held at a first logic level such that the first one of the plurality of client devices is always able to communicate with an external circuit connected to the at least one signal line, and wherein each of the plurality of client devices is configured to: receive the first logic level on the first initialization pin; change a device status of a current client device to an active status in response to receiving the first logic level on the first initialization pin such that the current client can receive an initialization command; receive the initialization command from the host computer by way of the at least one signal line; initialize in response to the received initialization command; assign a session address to the current client device, wherein if the current client has a dedicated device address and if the dedicated device address does not conflict with a previously assigned device address, then designating the dedicated device address as the session address otherwise assigning the session address to the current device by the host computer; change the device status to an initialized status in response to the completed initializing; set the second initialization pin to the first logic level in accordance with the initialized status; initializing the devices sharing the at least one signal line comprises: in any order, initializing the legacy device; and initializing the client devices.