Patent ID: 6898653

Claim:
A plug-and-play (PnP) interconnection architecture for interconnecting a peripheral device with a host computer unit, comprising: a host-side module installed on the host computer unit; and a peripheral-side module installed on the peripheral device; wherein the peripheral-side module includes: a communication interface for linking internal functional modules of the peripheral device to the host computer unit; an in-device storage unit coupled to the communication interface and at least used for storing data relating to the peripheral device; and a peripheral function unit coupled to the communication interface, for storing data relating to a hardware architecture and firmware for the peripheral device; and the host-side module includes: a communication interface linked to the communication interface of the peripheral-side module installed on the peripheral device; and a software platform that supports PnP devices, the software platform being coupled to the communication interface and capable of performing a PnP-compliant auto-configuration procedure and a device-driver setup procedure; wherein as the peripheral device is linked via the communication interfaces to the host computer unit, the software platform is activated to perform a PnP-compliant auto-configuration procedure to configure the host computer unit for interconnection with the peripheral device; and then, if a device driver of the peripheral device is not installed on the host computer unit, a device-driver setup procedure is performed to download and set up a device driver pre-stored in the in-device storage unit into the host computer unit.