Patent ID: 6870855

Claim:
An electronic apparatus adapted to transmit and receive data over a serial data bus, said apparatus comprising: a first terminal operably connectable to an IEEE 1394 serial bus cable having two twisted pairs; a second terminal operably connectable to a multi-purpose cable for use as at least part of said serial data bus when operably connected to said second terminal, said multi-purpose cable selected from the group consisting of an optical-fiber cable, an unshielded-twisted pair (UTP) cable, and a stand-alone cable comprising only one shielded-twisted pair (STP) cable; an IEEE 1394 physical-layer protocol logic section operative to perform serial data bus initialization and arbitration; a first conversion section connected between said logic section and said first terminal to convert signals transmitted and received between said serial bus cable and said logic section, said first conversion section comprising a DS coding section and a first signal level adjustment section; and a second conversion section connected between said second terminal and said logic section to convert signals transmitted and received to and from said logic section and said optical-fiber, UTP or stand-alone cable, said second conversion section comprising a code conversion section, a multilevel transmission-3 (MLT-3) section for performing MLT-3 coding of data to be transmitted on said UTP cable or stand-alone cable, and for performing MLT-3 reverse conversion of data received from said UTP or stand-alone cable, and a second signal level adjustment section.