Dell USA L P

Dell Products Inc.

Other

Anthony L Overfield

Gregory N Stewart

Mark T Ellis

Alok Pant

Craig S Jones

John J Pearce

Kendall C Witte

James E Dailey

James L Walker

Jim Walker

Jeffrey W Porter

A method for relocating system management interface code in an information handling system which includes extracting a relocation table from the system management interface code, inserting a relocation identifier in each entry of the system management interface code having an address, searching the system management code for the relocation identifier during execution of the information handling system, and inserting an address based upon a relocation address for each entry in the system management interface code having a relocation identifier.

Relocating of system management interface code within an information handling system

A system and method is disclosed for providing a firmware update to a device of a computer system in which a firmware update application and a firmware image are provided to a computer system. Verification steps are performed to insure that both the firmware update application and the user are authorized to perform the firmware update process. If the verification steps indicate that both the firmware update application and the user are authorized, the computer system is reset. During the boot process, the presence of the firmware update is recognized and the firmware update application is initiated, resulting in an update of the firmware of the device.

System and method for providing a secure firmware update to a device in a computer system

A system which builds an operating system-independent environment for executing utility programs is created by establishing a virtual drive that resides on a physical disk drive within the native file system of a native operating system. A virtual drive is a set of files on a physical disk drive that is configured to emulate a physical disk drive. The virtual drive can be deleted by a computer user and similarly can be re-established by the computer user. The virtual drive is bootable and activates an operating system that makes all system resources accessible to the utility programs and also allows the computer user to use the disk space that is allocated for the virtual drive, if desired.

Operating system independent system for running utility programs in a defined environment

A portable computer system with a special connector, on the motherboard, into which a field-installable boot card can be inserted. The special motherboard connector is wired so that the operator, by setting connections on the field-installable boot card, can bypass the boot memory on the motherboard and force the computer to boot from the memory on the boot card. This permits a technician, in the field, to temporarily override the internal nonvolatile memory which holds the basic system software. This permits recovery of a system in which the basic system software has been corrupted. Preferably the motherboard boot memory is a flash EPROM, and can be rewritten, by setting appropriate jumpers on the boot card, after the computer has booted from the boot card. The motherboard connector is preferably located on the motherboard, and is accessible through a removable cover. This connector can also preferably be used for temporary attachment of a diagnostic display card.

Computer system with plug-in override of system ROM

Disclosed is a circuit for assisting programmers in developing programs to be loaded into read-only memories within microprocessor-based systems. The circuit acts as a ROM emulator and is powered by the target computer system, thus removing the need for an external power supply. The circuit may be reprogrammed by the target computer system even if the target computer system is not designed to allow write cycles to read-only memory. The software to be developed is stored in an electrically erasable programmable read-only memory, and may be reprogrammed either from the target computer system or through the parallel interface of a host computer system.

System and method for ROM program development

A computer system in which the system software (while running as an overhead process which is not directly under control of the user) queries a disk drive to determine its model. The system software checks the corresponding response string with reference to a table of recognized model strings (in encrypted format). If the drive's response string is recognized in this table, then the drive parameters can be set appropriately. If not, then this portion of the system software will not set the drive parameters; instead, the normal manual setup procedure can be used.

Computer system with automatic drive model ID recognition and drive type

A portable computer system wherein the printer port can be used, at the user's option, not only for connection to a printer, but also for connection to an external floppy disk drive. If the BIOS determines that there is an external floppy drive attached, the BIOS disables the normal operation of the parallel port in order to allow the external floppy to operate.

Portable computer with automatic adaption to different device types on a

A disk drive array with a controller which provides: dynamic remapping for grown defects in the disk drives, multi-thread request processing with a variable number of forkings, defect tracking with both logical and physical lists, guarded writes of less than a full stripe optimized by selectably using the redundancy to limit the number of sectors involved, association of multiple operations with a single disk request in order to facilitate error handling, use of an access hiatus as indication of further opportunity to rebuild data in background, and scatter/scatter (bidirectional scatter/gather) operations.

Growing community of inventors

Austin, TX, United States of America

Anthony L Overfield