Patents Represented by Attorney Fredrick Gribbell
  • Patent number: 6865241
    Abstract: An improved data acquisition system interface provides virtually constant sampling of input signals and provides those signals in a digitized format to a data acquisition unit that may not be able to sample at a constant rate without missing or “losing” some of the samples. The present invention acts as a front end interface that temporarily latches the sampled data, expands the data into multiple parallel signals, then stores the multiple parallel signals in a dual-port FIFO memory unit. Finally, the multiple parallel signals are transferred into the data acquisition unit at a lower frequency, and the transfer operations take place only when the data acquisition unit is ready to accept data. Since the front end misses no sampling intervals (i.e., it always takes a sample according to an extremely constant frequency crystal clock), then the data acquisition unit will be provided with all of these samples without losing any data.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 15, 1999
    Date of Patent: March 8, 2005
    Assignee: Lexmark International, Inc.
    Inventors: Christopher Alan Adkins, David Allen Crutchfield