EXTENDED CAPABILITIES PARALLEL PORT
ECP provides a number of advantages, some of
which are listed below. The individual features
are explained in greater detail in the remainder
of this section.
• High performance half-duplex forward and
reverse channel
• Interlocked handshake, for fast reliable
transfer
• Optional single byte RLE compression for
improved throughput (64:1)
• Channel addressing for low-cost peripherals
• Maintains link and data layer separation
• Permits the use of active output drivers
• Permits the use of adaptive signal timing
• Peer-to-peer capability
Vocabulary
The following terms are used in this document:
assert: When a signal asserts it transitions to a
"true" state, when a signal deasserts it
transitions to a "false" state.
forward: Host to Peripheral communication.
reverse: Peripheral to Host communication
Pword: A port word; equal in size to the width
of the ISA interface. For this
implementation, PWord is always 8
bits.
1
A high level.
0
A low level.
These terms may be considered synonymous:
• PeriphClk, nAck
• HostAck, nAutoFd
• PeriphAck, Busy
• nPeriphRequest, nFault
• nReverseRequest, nInit
• nAckReverse, PError
• Xflag, Select
• ECPMode, nSelectln
• HostClk, nStrobe
Reference Document: IEEE 1284 Extended
Capabilities Port Protocol and ISA Interface
Standard, Rev 1.14, July 14, 1993. This
document is available from Microsoft.
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