Appeal No. 95-3125
Application 08/071,920
each of the secondary hardware interfaces. The examiner
generally concludes that the claimed address counter would
have been obvious in view of Ketelhut because such elements
are well known and common in the art and such elements would
make Ketelhut’s system more efficient and flexible [answer,
pages 5-6]. Appellant argues that Ketelhut does not teach the
hardware controlled multinode interfaces as recited in claims
1 and 11. Appellant also argues that Ketelhut does not teach
or suggest the bytes of information as recited in claim 1.
Finally, appellant argues that the address counter as recited
in independent claims 1 and 11 is neither taught nor suggested
by Ketelhut.
At the outset we observe that Ketelhut is basically
exemplary of the type of distributed input/output controller
which appellant describes as the prior art. In particular,
Ketelhut uses a programmed central processing unit (software)
for the host interface [element 20] and for each of the
secondary interfaces [element 36]. Although any central
processing unit is a combination of hardware and software
components, it is clear from appellant’s description of the
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