Patent ID: 8566499

Claim:
A system, comprising: a hard disk controller configured to, using only a single pin, transfer serial information from the hard disk controller, wherein the serial information includes control data associated with control of both write operations and read operations, and wherein the control data includes a start bit indicating a start of the serial information being transferred from the hard disk controller, one or more sets of instruction bits following the start bit, wherein each set of instruction bits includes a same predetermined number of instruction bits, and wherein each set of instruction bits i) includes a first instruction bit indicating a length of the serial information being transferred from the hard disk controller, and ii) does not include the start bit, and an end bit respectively following each of the one or more sets of instruction bits, wherein each end bit respectively indicates whether an additional set of instruction bits of the one or more sets of instruction bits follows the end bit; and a read/write channel configured to i) receive the serial information being transferred from the hard disk controller, and ii) perform the write operations and the read operations based on the one or more sets of instruction bits contained in the serial information being transferred from the hard disk controller.