INFORMATION PROCESSING SYSTEM, INPUT/OUTPUT DEVICE, METHOD FOR USE THEREWITH FOR AUTOMATICALLY SENDING DATA DURING SYSTEM FAILURE, AND ITS PROGRAM

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an information processing system capable of monitoring the operation of an existing OS without modifying the OS at all. SOLUTION: The OS alive monitoring mechanism 41 of an I/O device 4 is achieved using the interruption mechanism of a device mounted in a conventional I/O bus. An interrupt is reported so as to detect access to a register that indicates the state of a device existing in the I/O device 4 in order for the OS 10 to check the cause of the interrupt, so as to monitor if the OS 10 responds to the interrupt. If there is no response from the OS 10, the I/O device 4 determines that the OS 10 has stopped, and the operation of sending necessary data based on data that the OS 10 sets during initialization of the I/O device 4 and on information operated as directed by the OS 10 during operation of the OS 10 is started after the stop of the OS 10. COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI