JPH0277828A - disk controller - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Summary] This bulletin contains application data before electronic filing, so abstract data is not recorded.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a disk device, and particularly to a disk control device that is effective in processing control commands for a disk drive device having a command buffer.

[Conventional technology]

A conventional disk control device has only one register for storing commands, as described in the manual for the Hitachi hard disk controller HD6346M, for example. Furthermore, these commands, such as read commands and write commands, perform read/write operations only for specific disk formats.

[Problem to be solved by the invention]

However, it is very difficult to control a wide variety of disk devices at high speed simply by setting read and write commands in one command register. That is, since there is only one register for storing commands and the types of commands are limited, there is a problem in that a wide variety of controls of the disk device cannot be performed at high speed.

In order to solve this problem, a command buffer should be provided to store command sequences according to the desired control, and format commands for controlling the disk format in detail should be combined according to the purpose and stored in the command buffer. However, if seven format commands are combined according to the control and stored in the buffer each time, a new problem arises in that the capacity and number of cycles will increase in the control program that stores the format commands. occurs.

An object of the present invention is to provide a disk control device that can perform desired control without combining format commands and storing them in a buffer for each control.

[Failure to solve the problem]

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a disk control device that controls data transfer between a host converter and a disk device, and a command buffer that stores a command string according to desired control; The present invention is characterized by comprising a RAM for storing the start address of each command string stored in the command string, and a command start register for setting the address of the RAM in which the start address of the desired command string is stored.

The command buffer may include a ROM and a RAM, and a predetermined command sequence may be stored in the ROM portion. Further, a command sequence unique to Uf may be stored in the RAM portion of the command buffer.

[Effect]

The command buffer stores in advance command sequences that are combined according to each control. In addition, the start address of each frame and command string is stored in the star address storage RAM. When set in the command start register, desired control is started.

Specifically, the command start register accesses the address of the start address storage RAM according to its set value, and the contents of that address are thereby stored as the start address in the address counter of the command buffer. The contents of the command buffer indicated by this address counter are sequentially output to the command processing circuit, and desired control as instructed is executed.

As described above, according to the present invention, it is no longer necessary to rewrite the contents of the command buffer and reset the address counter each time a geographic location is used, as is the case in the past, so command processing can be performed quickly.

〔Example〕

Hereinafter, one embodiment of the present invention will be explained in detail with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a disk control device according to an embodiment of the present invention. This device includes a command start register 1-1, a start address storage RAM 1-2, an address counter 1-3, a command buffer 1-4, and a command processing circuit 1-5.

Command start register 1-1 is a start address storage RAM 1 that stores command start addresses.
-2 address, and the content of this specified address, that is, the start address, is the address counter 1-5.
is set to The contents of the command buffer 1-4 at the address indicated by this address counter are the contents of the command processing circuit 1.
-5 and is read out and processed. After this process is completed, a counter pulse is output from the command processing circuit 1-5 to the signal line 1-6, the address counter 1-3 is incremented, and the process continues in the same manner.

Next, as a specific example of processing, the basic operation when performing read processing 1 will be described with reference to FIG.

First, the start address storage RAM stores "0" which is the start address of the command buffer 1-4 where the format command for read processing 1 is stored.
Set "00", which is the address of 1-2, in the :f cloak start register 1-1. This means that the content of address 00 of the start address storage RAM1-2 is "0" from K.
# is set in the address counter 1-5, and the format command at address 0 of the command buffer 1-4 is read out to the command processing circuit 1-5 and processed.

After this process is completed, a counter pulse is output to the signal line 1-6 to increment the address counter 1-3. The process continues in the same manner until the process is completed.

Also, address 00 of the start address storage RAM 1-2 is rewritten to "45", and the command start register 1-1
When K“00#” is set, “45”, which is the contents of address 00 of the start address storage RAM 1-2, is set in the address counter 1-3, and
The format command for read processing 2, which is the content of address 5, is read out and processed by the command processing circuit 1-5. After this process is completed, a counter pulse is output to the signal line 1-6, the address counter 1-5 is incremented, and the process is continued in the same way.

By rewriting the start address storage RAM 1-2 in this way, several types of read processing can be performed even if the command start register 1-1 is accessed with the same value, and the user can set the value in the command start register 1-1. All you need to know is the value.

Furthermore, as shown in Figure 3, format commands that are likely to be used are stored in the command buffer 1.
-4 may be provided at the lower level, and a RAM area may be provided at the upper level for storing format commands for user-specific processing. In this case, normal processing accesses the format command stored in the ROM, and user-specific processing accesses the user area.

〔Effect of the invention〕

As detailed above, according to the present invention, there is no need to rewrite the command buffer every time control is performed, and several types of read, write, and format data can be stored in the command start register by simply rewriting the contents of the start address storage RAM. Since this can be done without changing the values, it is possible to reduce the capacity and number of cycles in a disk control program, and also to quickly perform a wide variety of controls.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a disk control device according to an embodiment of the present invention, FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram of the operation of the device shown in FIG. 1, and FIG. 5 is an explanation of an example of a command buffer of the disk control device of the present invention. It is a diagram. 1-1... Command start register 1-2... Start address storage RAM 1-3... Address counter 1-4... Command buffer 1-5... Command processing circuit 1-6... Signal line

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. In a disk control device that controls data transfer between a host computer and a disk device, a command buffer stores a command sequence according to desired control, and each command buffer stored in the command buffer 1. A disk control device comprising: a RAM that stores a start address of a command string; and a command start register that sets an address in the RAM that stores a start address of a desired command string. 2. The disk control device according to claim 1, wherein the command buffer is composed of a ROM and a RAM, and a predetermined command sequence is stored in the ROM portion. 3. The disk control device according to claim 2, wherein a user-specific command string is stored in a RAM portion of the command buffer.