Patent ID: 6851068

Claim:
A peripheral subsystem for extending a host peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus of a host system to connect with a plurality of peripheral devices, the peripheral subsystem comprising: a power supply unit for supplying power to the peripheral subsystem; a remote PCI bus; a signal processor relaying signals from the host PCI bus to the remote PCI bus; a plurality of expansion slots located off the remote PCI bus,each of the plurality of expansion slots adapted to connect with one of the plurality of peripheral devices; a low pass filter receiving an incoming signal from the host system; a comparator circuit comparing the filtered incoming signal against a threshold value; a power up circuit that is triggered by the comparator circuit to power on the power supply if the filtered incoming signal exceeds the threshold value; and a power down circuit that is triggered by the comparator circuit to power off the power suppy if the filtered incoming signal does not exceed the threshold value.