Thomson Consumer Electronics Inc.

Thomson Licensing S.a.

David Michael Browning

Gabriel Alfred Edde

Michael D Landis

Michael James Sullivan

UHF antenna

In an electronic instrument subject to power line interruptions and having a standby power supply, an external timer is used to time a predetermined brief period (e.g. 15 seconds to 1 minute). If the timer has not yet expired when standby power is once again developed, then a controller will cause a real time clock to start timing, using the currently held time of day. If the timer has expired when standby power is once again developed, the controller will cause the time of day clock to indicate that its time is no longer accurate. Moreover, if the timer has expired, then the controller will not cause the receiver to be turned on. If the timer has not expired, then the controller will determine if the receiver was turned on when the AC power line failure occurred, and if so, the controller will cause the receiver to turn on. If the receiver was turned off when the AC power line failure occurred, then the controller will cause the receiver to remain in standby mode. If, however, a reset was caused by an extremely fast phenomenon, such as a kine arc, then the receiver would not have had time to store status bytes. Upon waking up, the receiver would note that it was inoperative for only a short time, and that certain functions, such as degaussing need not be performed.

Apparatus for determining if the duration of a power failure exceeded

To accomplish automatic error correction in an electronics instrument, the instrument includes a controller, coupled to at least one peripheral unit via a communications bus for bidirectional communication with the peripheral unit, coupled to a memory circuit for storing data indicative of the operational status of the peripheral unit, and coupled to a power supply which supplies power to the peripheral unit. The controller reads the operational status data from the peripheral unit and upon detection of an error condition, writes data indicative of status to the memory circuit and causes a removal of power, for a predetermined time, from said peripheral unit, followed by the reapplication of the power. The power supplies themselves are also monitored and, in the event of a detected error in power supply output, the power supply is turned off and turned on in an attempt to clear the problem. In this way, a peripheral unit not having an external reset pin can, nevertheless, be reset by the controller to clear problems caused by transient interference. If the problem persists after a predetermined number of attempts to clear it, the electronics instrument is automatically shut off.

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Indianapolis, IN, United States of America

David Michael Browning