Object-oriented resource lock and entry register

Details Object-oriented resource lock and entry register Object-oriented resource lock and entry register

1998-01-30

2003-10-21

Courtenay, III, St. John (Department: 2126)

Electrical computers and digital processing systems: multicomput

Computer-to-computer data routing

Least weight routing

C710S200000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06636901

ABSTRACT:

COPYRIGHT NOTIFICATION
Portions of this patent application contain material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document, or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office. All other rights are expressly reserved.
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to the configuration of computer systems and, more particularly, to an object-oriented apparatus and a method for assigning computer system resources to a plurality of I/O devices coupled to the computer system while avoiding conflicts among the devices for the resources.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
A typical computer system is comprised of a variety of interconnected computer hardware components and devices. The terms “computer hardware components,” “hardware components,” “peripheral devices” or simply “devices” all refer to individual electronic devices which are coupled together to provide the computer system. For example, the computer keyboard, mouse, monitor, printer, hard disk drives, floppy disk drives, memory boards and the like constitute such devices. Many of these components are mounted on a printed circuit board generally referred to as a “planar” or a “motherboard.”
In many conventional architectures, the various components are connected together by means of a system bus which defines a medium over which information is transferred between the components. The system bus typically includes data, address and control lines which carry data, address and control information between the various system components. For example, an interrupt signal may be sent from one or more of the peripheral devices over the control lines of the system bus to the processor.
The system bus and some basic hardware components connected to the system bus form an integrated system which is generally contained on the motherboard. In many personal computer systems, the system bus is connected to an extension called an “expansion” bus and the motherboard typically has one or more slots or connectors on the expansion bus, which connectors are referred to as “expansion slots” or “expansion connectors.”
To enhance the performance of the computer system, additional hardware components on printed circuit boards referred to as “device expansion boards”, “device expansion cards”, “expansion boards” or “expansion cards” can be plugged into the expansion slots. Depending upon the particular architecture of the computer system bus, an expansion card may constitute a bus adapter which has its own bus and slots. Other expansion cards can then be plugged into these latter slots.
Expansion cards are generally coupled to a computer system to enhance the capabilities or performance of the computer system. For example, one type of expansion card is a memory expansion card which may be used to increase the amount of random access memory (RAM) available for use by the processor of the computer system. Other expansion cards include sound cards, SCSI bus adapters, graphics accelerator cards and others.
Many expansion cards can be customized or configured by setting the values of one or more parameters. In some cards, the values are set manually by changing jumpers of switches located on the boards. In other cases, the parameters are set either manually or automatically by software. More particularly, the computer system is typically controlled and coordinated by a software program called a computer operating system (e.g. MS-DOS, OS/2, etc . . . ). Each device connected to the system bus interacts with the computer operating system through another software routine called a device driver. The device driver receives commands from the operating system and uses the commands to control the device.
In the case where device parameters are set by software, the device driver can often access the device parameters which parameters may be stored in the device itself, in the computer memory or in other portions of the computer system. The device parameters can then be set manually through the device driver software. In other cases, the device parameters are set automatically be means of configuration software which interacts with the driver software.
Device drivers are provided as part of the computer operating system software for devices which are typically found in a conventional computer system. For example, operating system software typically includes device drivers for the computer keyboard, monitor, hard and floppy disk drives, and communication ports. Since there are so many different I/O expansion device configurations, these devices have device-specific device drivers which typically are not provided as part of the operating system software, but instead are stored as separate files. Such individual device drivers are generally referred to as installable device drivers since they must be explicitly installed in the system memory before the associated device can be used.
For example, in a computer which executes the MS-DOS operating system, an installation command for a particular installable device driver could be added to a boot file named “config.sys” which file is stored in a memory of the computer. When the computer processor initially begins executing the MS-DOS operating system, the processor executes the commands contained in the config.sys file. When device driver commands are included in this file, the processor executes the installation command for the installable device driver which loads the installable device driver into memory thereby providing access to the device. Alternatively, an application program which needs access to the device could load the driver during its initialization phase.
In addition to physically inserting an expansion card, installing the device driver and setting device parameters, in many cases it is also necessary to allocate computer resources to the expansion card. The term “computer resource” or more simply “resource” refers to anything within a computer system which either occupies memory of the computer system or which is required to allow the computer system to perform a particular function. To print a page of a document, for example, certain resources such as character font sets, glyph sets, point tables, brush tables, user defined graphic images and data that describes a page to be printed may be required to perform a print function. Thus, such resources may be referred to as printer resources.
Expansion cards also provide I/O functions to the computer system. An I/O function is provided by a discrete device that is independently assigned I/O resources. Examples of I/O Functions are, Serial Port, SCSI port, Floppy, etc. I/O functions require I/O resources, which include, but are not limited to, computer memory space, I/O registers, interrupt signal lines, interrupt levels, interrupt sockets, direct memory access (DMA) channels, etc., which allow the I/O hardware components to operate with the computer system. Generally, the term I/O function is used in the discussion which follows rather than I/O device, since a single physical device or card may have several I/O functions implemented on it. Consequently, a function corresponds to a logical device rather than a physical device.
The computer resources are often allocated to the I/O expansion boards in the same manner as hardware component parameters are set. For example, in some cases, resources can be allocated or selected manually, while in other cases, automatic configuration software allocates the resources.
More specifically, many personal computers utilize a system bus architecture referred to as the industry standard architecture (ISA) bus architecture. The ISA bus architecture has been implemented in a very large number of IBM and IBM-compatible personal computers. Computers employing the ISA bus architecture require the allocation of system resources such as memory, I/O address spaces, direct memory access (DMA) channels, interrupt request lines and interrupt levels among multiple ISA expansion cards in the system.
The types of expansion cards

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