Appeal No. 2002-1832
Application No. 09/318,980 Page 6
lines 1-4). The invention relates to a circuit board which is
coupled to a peripheral such as a printer. The prior art
required a server for the printer (col. 1, lines 30-32). The
circuit board eliminates the necessity of dedicating a personal
computer to manage the peripheral (col. 1, lines 11-16). Figure
1 represents a LAN, and shows a Network Expansion Board (NEB) 2
coupled to printer 4 (col. 4, lines 27-30). The NEB provides
functionalities that used to require a PC (col. 12, lines 10-12,
col. 13, lines 1-10, and col. 6, line 55). Printer information
is displayed on the administrator's PC 14 (col. 7, lines 38-43).
In one aspect of the invention, the board is tested. After a
power-on-self-test is completed, a test program is loaded onto
the board. The test is executed and the results are outputted to
a test computer, which will script additional tests in accordance
with the test results. In addition, after rescripting further
test modules, PC1 can locate the problem and debug NEB 2
(col. 56, 54-59). After completion of the test program, an
operational program is downloaded onto the board and is loaded
into an EPROM on the board (col. 2, lines 24-50). Information
from the NEB 2 to the LAN is limited to printer status
information (col. 13, line 62, and col. 21, line 68 through
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