Design of a controller for a universal input/output port

Author

Bhatt, D.V. ; du Toit, D. ; Hancke, Gerhard P.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr., Electron. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

fYear

2012

fDate

13-16 May 2012

Firstpage

647

Lastpage

652

Abstract

Desktop computers, modern and old, all have a large number of different input/output (I/O) ports. Typically these include (but are not limited to) two PS/2 connectors for a mouse and keyboard, two or more universal serial bus (USB) ports, a parallel (LPT) port, a serial (RS-232/COM) port, a network (Ethernet) port and a VGA (video graphics array) port. Each type of port requires a different physical connector and has a specific protocol permanently assigned to it for communication with the peripheral device that will be attached to it. First-time computer users are often daunted by the task of connecting peripherals to their systems, as the large number of different connectors can be confusing to newcomers. The problem addressed by this project was to design an I/O controller with a number of identical “universal” ports, with each port capable of supporting at least three non-similar protocols/standards (specifically PS/2, USB and VGA).

Keywords

computer graphics; input-output programs; peripheral interfaces; protocols; Ethernet port; I/O controller; I/O ports; LPT port; PS-2 connectors; RS-232-COM port; USB ports; VGA port; controller design; desktop computers; parallel port; peripheral device; protocol; serial port; universal input-output port; universal serial bus ports; video graphics array port; Hardware; Keyboards; Microcontrollers; Pins; Protocols; Universal Serial Bus; I/O controller; PS/2; RS232; USB; VGA;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference (I2MTC), 2012 IEEE International

Conference_Location

Graz

ISSN

1091-5281

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-1773-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/I2MTC.2012.6229492

Filename

6229492