Patent ID: 8438239

Claim:
A method of sharing functional operability data between a plurality of terminal devices comprising: gathering a plurality of terminal devices that are each selectively configurable to operate as either a transmit-mode device or a receive-mode device when sharing functional operability data; coupling at least one terminal device that has desired functional operability data and a plurality of terminal devices which lack the desired functional operability data to a plurality of ports that are coupled together with a data transfer connection; monitoring the occurrence of a trigger event when the terminal devices are coupled to the plurality of ports and determining if a terminal device has desired functional operability data for distribution; upon the occurrence of a trigger event, automatically operating the at least one of the terminal devices in a transmit-mode state as a transmit-mode terminal device if it has the desired functional operability data and operating other devices of the plurality of terminal devices in a receive-mode state as receive-mode terminal devices if they lack the desired functional operability data; determining that the transmit-mode terminal device that is coupled to a port has distributable desired functional operability data; if the transmit-mode terminal device has distributable desired functional operability, transmitting the distributable functional operability data from the transmit-mode terminal device port to the plurality of receive-mode terminal devices in ports to be received by the receive-mode terminal devices for enabling the receive-mode terminal devices with the desired functional operability associated with the data.