Patent ID: 7231485

Claim:
A method of communicating with a mass storage device comprising: receiving ATA/ATAPI signals from a mass storage device into a bridging circuit; updating a state machine in response to embedded commands in the ATA/ATAPI signals; converting the ATA/ATAPI signals from the mass storage device into USB signals using the bridging circuit in response to the state machine; and outputting the USB signals from the bridging circuit; wherein the bridging circuit is provided in a single, bridging chip, the bridging chip including: a USB physical interface transceiver; a serial interface engine coupled to the USB physical interface transceiver; an input/output interface coupled to the serial interface engine; a ram control circuit coupled to the input/output interface; a global control circuit coupled to the input/output interface; a translate circuit coupled to the global control circuit; and a disk interface coupled to the ram control circuit and the translate circuit.