Electrical computers and digital data processing systems: input/ – Intrasystem connection – Bus interface architecture
Reexamination Certificate
2000-07-19
2004-05-18
Ray, Gopal C. (Department: 2181)
Electrical computers and digital data processing systems: input/
Intrasystem connection
Bus interface architecture
C710S001000, C710S011000, C710S106000, C710S300000, C710S105000, C710S314000, C710S316000, C345S156000, C713S300000, C713S320000, C307S031000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06738856
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to connecting an external peripheral to a universal serial bus (USB) port on a computer, and more specifically, to a system and apparatus for connecting a digitally controlled display peripheral to the USB port of a computer or a USB hub.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The various capabilities and features of external computer peripherals sometimes must be accessed through a series of computer system components. In the current age of personal computer use, these components may be designed and produced by different companies and achieve some level of compliance to interchangability standards. At the same time, these non-standard components may not support access to all of the features of a particular manufacturers external peripheral. All such component manufactures make market related choices regarding which features and capabilities they choose to support. Ultimately, special niche markets and external peripherals that have applications to these markets, may not get supported by such component manufacturers.
A specific example concerns computer displays and their characteristics. Display peripheral vendors design advanced capability that often is not supported by operating system vendors or graphic card vendors. Typically, without support from such interim solution providers, advanced capabilities, which may not be mass market oriented, cannot find third party implementation for control software or interface means. Users must take additional steps to provide access to the advanced capability that increases cost or compromises accessibility.
For example, external display peripherals benefit from digital control from an attached host computer. While it is well known that photopic and/or calorimetric measurement and adjustment of display parameters can result in improvement of display capability, effecting such adjustment across various operating system software, third party software, and graphic cards can be quite complicated and may not be possible based on the capabilities of each.
Recent standards regarding implementation of display characteristics have been published by the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) committee, and are implemented by several display peripheral vendors. The VESA committee is a modem day standards organization active in developing standards for use in the display peripherals regardless of the specific display technology and across many communication protocols and interfaces. Standards organizations have allowed for many popular features to be implemented by multiple manufacturers in a standard fashion in response to end user plug and play needs.
Most modern display devices include digital control features such as the capability to power down, at least partially, after a period on non-use in order to save energy and increase the useful product life. At least some modern devices also allow the identification of manufacturer make and model via a digital electronic interface so that host systems can automatically detect and operate the peripheral in optimum fashion.
Access to these controls is allowed through signals that are transmitted through the cable that connects the display peripheral to computer. Often the computer may have a supplemental graphics card included to which the cable connects. This graphics card and its controls must support or pass functions for them to be available downstream.
In the specific area of digital electronic control of display devices, such as cathode ray tubes (CRT's), liquid crystal displays (LCD's), and Plasma Display Panel (PDP's), VESA has developed and continues to issue revisions to the “Display Data Channel” (‘DDC’) specifications. The specification of these control signals includes the communication protocol, connector style, signal definition and pin assignments in order to conform to the particular version of the standard. A recent communication protocol known as “I2C” has been adopted to communicate these DDC commands to the graphic host, often a graphics card internal to the host computer.
Typically, the graphic host, whether it be an add in graphics display card for the host or a built in graphics capability to the motherboard of the host computer, interfaces with the display device over this protocol to receive and transmit digital commands which control many aspects regarding how data is displayed by the display peripheral. The graphics host must communicate through operating system software to the host computer to allow such settings to be selected, either by user interaction or automatic plug and play selection through host computer. Advances in wireless and Internet communications also provide remote access and communication.
In an environment where multiple manufacturers supply various components of computer systems, such as graphic cards, host computers, operating system software, and display devices the benefits of such popular standards to the end user are clear. Users benefit from standard implementation of common features because component selection is competitive and plug and play operation is possible once all manufacturers comply with the standard. However, less popular or more complex functions may not get adopted by such industry based standards organizations or incorporated by the manufacturers.
For example, display manufacturers may choose to implement features in addition to those that have been adopted by the standard organizations to give their current products a competitive market edge over other manufacturers. Additionally, since VESA consists of industry members from profit based firms, there may be competitive reasons for one manufacturer to favor, promote, or not disclose some enhancement to the DDC specification.
One such example of this is the scale display command. This is a generic command that scales the geometry of the electronic display so that it fits the available screen real estate. The standards organization has defined this command both for horizontal and vertical directions. At least one display peripheral manufacturer has implemented this command in both the standards fashion as well as in its own format, referring to it as a ‘zoom’ command, possibly perceiving this presentation to more intuitive to the user. Since the DDC format is well known by anyone skilled in the art, detecting the byte order of the combined command, which sets both the vertical and horizontal standardized commands simultaneously, is not difficult.
A disadvantage of the present methods by which VESA standards are implemented is that many manufacturers must support a feature of the DDC to allow end users to remotely access its settings. Typically a command to set a color related aspect of the display device is set directly at the push button control panel of the display peripheral or through user interface to the host computer. If the particular display implements a manual control panel the user can, at the display manufacturer's option, set these parameters locally, but not remotely. Often the manual control panel feature carries substantial cost to the display peripheral manufacturer and it is difficult to cost justify the inclusion for markets wherein only a small portion of users make use of such features. In order for the user to set such features at the host computer, both the operating system and the graphic host must support calls to the feature contained in the display device.
In the prior example regarding geometry ‘zoom’ of the display, the user could only set this parameter remotely if the operating system software or its extensions allowed the user to enter the command. The graphic host would also have to relay this command to the display peripheral. Manufacturers often use graphic display cards or third party graphic host devices added into the host computer that are unable or unwilling to support every nonstandard command from every display peripheral manufacturer. Ultimately, a disadvantage to end users is that only standard commands are routinely available for setting display para
Lianza Thomas
Lutz Carl David
Milley Nicholas A.
King Justin
Maine & Asmus
Ray Gopal C.
Sequel Imaging, Inc
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