Importance

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Abstract

In a bus adapter coupling a system bus and an I/O bus which operate at different speeds and contain a plurality of devices, a method by which an arbiter in the bus adapter prevents contention for ownership of both buses by a device on either of the buses. The method includes the steps of sampling each of the devices requesting ownership of said buses and asserting a bus grant to one of the devices on one of the buses based on its assigned priority number. The method also includes the step of waiting for the device granted the bus to send an acknowledge signal to display ownership of the buses and for each of the devices not on the bus containing the device granted the bus to see the acknowledge signal before resampling and reasserting a new bus grant to another of the requesting devices.

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First Claim