Patent ID: 7290072

Claim:
A gaming machine comprising: a master gaming controller adapted for i) generating a game of chance played on the gaming machine by executing a plurality of gaming software modules and ii) communicate with one or more USB (Universal Serial Bus) gaming peripherals using USB-compatible communications including a USB vendor-specific class protocol; the one or more of the USB gaming peripherals coupled to the gaming machine and in communication with the master gaming controller wherein a first USB-compatible peripheral device coupled to a first USB gaming peripheral is capable of communicating with the master gaming controller using the USB vendor-specific class protocol; a gaming operating system on the master gaming controller designed for loading gaming software modules into a Random Access Memory (RAM) for execution from the storage device and for unloading gaming software modules from the RAM; one or more host processes loaded by the gaming operating system designed for communicating with the USB-compatible peripheral device using the USB vendor-specific class protocol wherein each of the one or more USB gaming peripherals including the first USB gaming peripheral includes: 1) two or more USB interfaces wherein a USB device class for each of the USB interfaces including a vendor-specific device class used to select the USB vendor-specific class protocol for communications is specified for each of the two or more USB interfaces using class identification information obtained from a respective USB interface descriptor set associated with each of the two or more USB interfaces, 2) two or more USB features, 3) a first USB feature associated with a first USB interface designed to handle commands and messages common to the two or more USB features.