James W Lindeman

US Patent:

60030178, Dec 14, 1999

Filed:

May 30, 1997

Appl. No.:

8/866427

Inventors:

Anton B. Rang - Hudson WI
Kin C. Doe - Union City CA
Gordon A. Minami - San Jose CA
Daniel Olin Skeen - Morgan Hill CA
Tonghan Tee - Milpitas CA
James Lindeman - Fremont CA
Peter Cheung - Milpitas CA

Assignee:

Adaptec, Inc. - Milpitas CA

International Classification:

H04L 1200

US Classification:

705 35

Abstract:

A PCI to SCSI host adapter circuit is provided for use with different types of host platforms. The host adapter includes logic and controller circuits, and a memory having multiple drivers and a bank switching instruction set stored therein. During initialization, the first driver is loaded into the host's memory if the host's processor is of a compatible type. Otherwise, the bank switching instruction set is loaded into the host's memory and interpreted by the host's processor. During interpretation, the bank switching instruction set causes the host's processor to signal the logic circuit to request that the controller circuit re-map another driver to the location of the first driver in the memory. After this bank switching has occurred, the selected driver is loaded into the host's memory, provided of course that the host's processor is of a compatible type. This process may be repeated until the appropriate code type is found or the host processor is not supported.