Abstract: A supplemental alerting system for a fire alarm system comprises an alarm control device and a power line notification appliance (PLNA). The alarm control device generates a fire alarm code signal based on detecting a fire alarm mode signal transmitted from a fire alarm system. The PLNA generates at least one of a PLNA audible and PLNA visual fire alarm based on the fire alarm code signal.

Abstract: A computer card mounted in a computer, which has at least one other card having a similar functionality to the card, with the cards being connected to a common bus. Both cards also have overlapping memory, I/O, and interrupt selections assigned by a plug-and-play device. The card comprises a unique handle that is latched to the card by the plug-and-play device. If a card comparator detects a match between the unique handle and the selection data, a selector enables the card. If the comparator does not detect a match between the unique handle and the selection data, the selector disables the card.

Abstract: A system and method is disclosed for linking remote telecommunications ports connected to remote nodes wherein the functionality of a centralized switching system is distributed among the remote nodes. A multichannel bus couples the remote nodes to each other. In a preferred embodiment, the transmit channels of selected remote ports are permanently assigned to specified channels within the bus while the receive channels of the remote ports are permitted to float between all of the bus channels. In this distributed architecture, each node may receive a request from an associated port for a connection to another port. Each node is capable of performing the switching connections locally resulting in less message protocol being passed between nodes.