MULTIFUNCTIONAL ELECTRONIC PERIPHERAL CARD

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a multifunctional electronic peripheral card. SOLUTION: The multifunctional electronic peripheral card has a host interface, a multifunction controller, and a plurality of function devices. Each function device generates and provides an interrupt request to the multifunction controller to request services to be provided and can connect with a host through the host interface. The multifunction controller has an interrupt queue and an interrupted state register. Each one bit of the interrupted state register corresponds to one function device. When one function device transmits an interrupt request, a code representative of the function device is preserved in an interrupt queue, and the corresponding bit of the interrupted state register is set at one only when all the bits of the interrupted state register are set at zero, thereby transmitting the interrupt request to the host. After the host has completed services to the function device, the interrupt queue of the function device is updated to clear the interrupted state register of the function device. COPYRIGHT: (C)2003,JPO