Technique for time-sharing a microprocessor between a computer and a modem

Abstract

Abstract A personal computer's (300) microprocessor is time-shared to provide the functions formerly provided by a microprocessor dedicated to a modem. Advantageously, this technique is transparent to software applications programs which interact with a modem. In the disclosed embodiment, the personal computer (300) utilizes an operating system (304), such as the Microsoft Windows operating system, in which a portion of the operating system, known as the communications driver, provides the interface between the operating system and the personal computer's serial and parallel communication ports (305, 307, 308). In the disclosed embodiment, all communications between the communications driver and the rest of the operating system are examined (by 410). Those communications destined for a particular port associated with a modem (409) not having a dedicated microprocessor are redirected while other communications destined for other ports are passed to the Microsoft Windows communications driver (306). The redirected communications are coupled to a software application program (411) which utilizes the PC microprocessor to carry out the functions formerly provided by the modem microprocessor. As a result, the modem's (409) microprocessor and associated RAM and ROM can be eliminated. A feature of the present invention is that the software application program (411) can be loaded into the personal computer's memory only when required.

Inventors

• 👤 Velraj Ramaswamy
• 👤 Michael David Rauchwerk

Bibliographic Details