APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR INTERCONNECTING A PLURALITY OF DEVICES TO A SINGLE NODE IN A NODE-LIMITED SERIAL DATA BUS COMPUTER NETWORK

摘要

PD89-0200 A distributor apparatus (10) and its method of operation for interconnecting a node of a bus (12) in a node-limited serial data bus computer network to a plurality of subnode devices. A transmission on the bus is routed through the distributor (10) to each subnode device (20a - 20n) connected thereto. A transmission (22a) from a subnode device is coupled to the bus through the distributor after the distributor selects one transmitting subnode device in the event that there are more than one subnode devices transmitting or requesting to transmit. Selection of one transmitting subnode device is carried out by rotating priority arbitration (54) that occurs during an idle timing interval or quiet slot such that bus timing parameters are obeyed. FIG 1.