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US006560641B1
(12) United States Patent ao) Patent No.: us 6,560,641 Bi
Powderly et al. (45) Date of Patent: May 6,2003
(21) Appl. No.: 09/538,004
(22) Filed: Mar. 29, 2000
(51) Int. CI.7 G06F 17/30
(52) U.S. CI 709/219; 707/10
(58) Field of Search 709/217, 218,
709/219
(56) References Cited
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A system, method, and adapter card for providing, via a network, emulation of a console of a host computer system on another, remotely located computer system on the network, includes the ability to remotely control a peripheral device connected to a peripheral device interface controller on the adapter card. The adapter card further comprises a processor, a network interface controller providing a connection to the network, a communications client program executing on the processor, and at least one computerreadable medium having stored therein a modified BIOS extension for said peripheral device interface controller. The modified BIOS extension comprises first program code and second program code, the second program code being embedded within the first program code and defining a separate server program. Upon selection by a user at the remote computer system, the modified BIOS extension is loaded into the host memory during execution of the host computer system BIOS, in place of the standard BIOS extension for the peripheral device interface controller. When executed by the host processor, the first program code of the BIOS extension (i) copies the second program code defining the server program to a new location in the host memory, and then (ii) hooks the new location of the server program to an interrupt of the host computer system to cause the host processor to initiate execution of the server program on the host computer system upon a subsequent occurrence of that interrupt. The server program establishes communications with the communications client program on the adapter card, and, thereafter, upon receipt of requests from the communications client program, invokes functions of the host computer system BIOS to control the peripheral device.
30 Claims, 8 Drawing Sheets
