Quantum Corporation

Other

Plus Development Corporation

Xerox Corporation

Joel N Harrison

Donald V Daniels

David A Brown

Randolph H Graham

William G Moon

Michael D Leis

Satish L Rege

Thomas R Stone

Bruce R Peterson

Peter S Hahn

Joshua Lindsay

Brian J Nixon

Vincent Anthony Condito

Daniels Donald V

Frederick R Carlson, Jr

Richard C Simonsen

A single reed woodwind ligature system has an upper U-shaped structure for contacting the upper portion of a mouthpiece at one or more small areas of contact and for engaging a lower structure, preferably by threaded ends and nuts. A reed contactor plate contacts a reed at a portion of its bottom curved surface. At least one ball bearing sphere is located in aligned cavities of the lower structure and the reed contactor in a spaced-apart configuration and forms a pivot mechanism capable of roll, pitch and yaw rotations in three dimensions around the approximate center of the at least one sphere. Embodiments include multiple spheres and sphere-bearing pin contact combinations forming the three-dimensional adjustable pivot. A retainer holds the spherical pivot components together when the ligature system is not clamping the reed to the mouthpiece without hampering user adjustments in the three normal (roll, pitch and yaw) dimensional ranges.

Rotational pivot structure within single reed woodwind ligature system

The electrical panel barricade is a three sided cabinet that prevents unauthorized access to electrical panels that are uncovered for maintenance purposes. The electrical panel barricade is attached directly to the uncovered electrical panel using two adjustable clamping bars. The electrical panel barricade can be installed to protect an uncovered electrical panel that needs to be left unattended. The electrical panel barricade can be installed as a temporary closure to accommodate electrical testing equipment that may not fit into the original electrical panel. The electrical panel barricade comprises a door, a left panel, a right panel, a left locking wing, a right locking wing, a top member, and a bottom member.

Electrical panel barricade

A single reed ligature system for a woodwind musical instrument that provides a large vertical range of adjustment to enable a single ligature to be used with most sizes of saxophone and clarinet mouthpieces. Excellent responsiveness to the player is achieved through isolation of the ligature from the vibrating reed and mouthpiece.

Single reed woodwind ligature system adjusts to fit most mouthpiece sizes with excellent responsiveness through isolation of ligature from reed and mouthpiece vibrations

A cargo bed with multiple access points. The cargo bed comprises a front member, a back member, a cargo floor, and a pair of side members that move to allow access to the cargo floor from nearly all sides so as to allow a member access to the cargo floor from the sides of the cargo bed. The side members may rotate about an axis horizontal to the cargo floor, roll on a set of rails with an axis vertical to the cargo floor, open about an axis vertical to the cargo floor, or be removable. The cargo bed may further comprise receiving beams for receiving the side members and holding them in a closed position, or the receiving beams may be integrally built into the front, back, or side members.

Multi-access truck bed

A network storage device having a network controller card and a data storage device is described herein the card and storage device are either enclosed in a small from factor unit or assembled together to fit within a standard hard disk drive bay in a computer. The combination of a controller card and storage device is designed to transfer files from and to a network using standard network file protocols. As the network storage device does not process the files, much of the computational overhead of a network server can be eliminated, resulting in a simpler device capable of faster file exchange.

Mass storage device with network interface

A storage application programming interface (SAPI) engine is included in a hard disk drive (HDD). The SAPI engine operation is based on intelligent recognition of a plurality of different data objects characterized by type and/or size. The SAPI engine assigns a SAPI descriptor to data objects during its analysis recognition process. The SAPI descriptor identifies the type of the data object, and is used by the HDD to map the data object to a unique logical object address (LOA) space of the HDD tailored to characteristics of the particular disk drive. Using the SAPI descriptor assigned by the SAPI engine enables the HDD to more efficiently store data objects being sent by applications on a host computing system to the disk drive. The efficient storage by the HDD provides a system having improved access performance.

Method and apparatus for storage application programming interface for

A fixed disk memory subsystem connects to digital signal buses and a power supply of a host computer and includes a printed circuit board forming a subsystem mounting substrate for mounting and connecting a head and disk assembly and drive electronics. The head and disk assembly includes a radially positionable head transducer for flying in close proximity to a data storage surface of at least one rotating data storage disk, an actuator for positioning the data transducer at concentric data tracks defined on the surface, and a DC brushless spindle motor for rotating the data storage disk. The drive electronics includes a data transducer position control circuit for controlling operation of the actuator in relation to the concentric data tracks, read/write electronics connected to the transducer, a disk user data controller for obtaining digital control signals and digital data blocks from the host computer for storage in predetermined ones of said data tracks, and for supplying digital status signals and digital data blocks retrieved from predetermined ones of said data tracks to the host computer, and a programmed digital microcontroller connected for controlling operations of said data transducer position control circuit, the disk user data controller and the interface circuit.

Fixed disk drive mounted to printed circuit board

A servo calibration method is disclosed for a disk drive including a rotating data storage disk journalled to a frame and having a multiplicity of concentric data tracks defined on a major surface thereof and an actuator structure under the control of a programmed servo control microprocessor in response to coarse position information fed back to the microprocessor by a position encoder, and to fine position information fed back to the microprocessor by a data transducer reading from servo information prerecordced on the major surface of the disk, the actuator structure for moving the data transducer to each selected one of the data tracks during track seeking operations and for maintaining the transducer aligned with the data track during track following data read and/or write operations. Carried out during initialization, the method includes the steps of: automatically seeking to a region of radially outermost tracks, reading fine position information recorded in the single sector of each of a plurality of outermost tracks, and recording the outer track fine position information in memory; automatically seeking to a region of radially innermost tracks, reading fine position information recorded in the single sector of each of a plurality of innermost tracks, and recording the inner track fine position information in memory; for each data track to which a seek is initially commanded, which track lies between the outermost track region and the innermost track region, calculating with the microprocessor means a track centerline correction value lying between the outer track fine position information and the inner track fine position information, and applying the track centerline correction value so calculated as an offset value to the rotary actuator to correct any discrepancy between nominal track centerline defined by the position encoder.

Data transducer position control system for rotating disk data storage

A head and disk assembly for a fixed disk drive including control electronics and a host computer associated therewith comprises a frame and a cover for providing an interior space enclosed from the ambient; at least one data storage disk mounted within the interior space; the data storage disk having a data storage surface defining a multiplicity of concentric data storage tracks for storing user data and further defining factory prerecorded track centerline correction information which may be periodically sampled, held and processed by the control electronics; a disk rotation motor for rotating the disk relative to the frame at a predetermined angular velocity; a mass balanced, direct drive rotary actuator for positioning a data read/write head relative to the tracks in response to positioning signals supplied by the control electronics; an optical polyphase head position transducer coupled closely to the rotary actuator and the frame for generating plural phase cyclical signals e.g. in quandrature and for supplying the signals to the control electronics, at least four adjacent data track locations being included within a range of movement of the rotary actuator relative to the frame and disk within one cycle of one of the plural phases; whereby the control electronics may respond to commands from the host computer, to the plural phase cyclical signals and to the factory prerecorded track centerline correction information in order to generate and apply positioning signals to move the read/write head from track to track during seeking operations and to maintain the read/write head within within each data track during track following operations for reading and writing user data from and to a said track being followed.

Head and disk assembly for fixed disk drive

A higher performance, higher capacity, low cost fixed (Winchester) disk drive avoids the need of a servo surface and servo channel for head positioning by use of a mass balanced rotary actuator, a polyphase optical head position transducer coupled closely to the actuator and head position correction information sampled from the data surface by the data head.

Fixed disk drive

A data storage device includes a frame, a rotating data storage disk defining a multiplicity of concentric data tracks on the major surfaces thereof and at least one data transducer head in close proximity to a said disk surface. A bidirectionally moveable electromechanical mover includes a microstep providing stepping motor supported by the frame. The electromechanical mover is moveable between and stabilized at a position related to each data track. A head mounting structure moved by the mover moves the head across the multiplicity of concentric data tracks. A bidirectional mover driver connected to the mover moves the structure to any selected one of said concentric data tracks in accordance with externally supplied track position information and maintains the structure substantially within data track during read and/or write operations by reference to the frame. A data track stabilization means includes the stepping motor and stabilizes the structure within a range between the boundaries of each data track. A time sampled fine position closed loop servo is connected to the driver and includes a single, data masked servo sector on a data surface of said disk containing track centerline servo control data therein readable by said head, a sample and hold circuit connected to the head during passes over the servo sector for holding control data read therefrom, and a correction signal generator connected to the sample and hold circuit for generating an offset signal for application to said driver to promote and maintain track centerline alignment of the head during read and write operations.

A modular unitary disk file subsystem is used directly with a host computer. The subsystem includes a common unitary mounting substrate for power and signal connections to the host and for supplying control and data signals back via data, address and control buses to the host computer through a direct plug-in connection without any cabling between the subsystem and the host. The substrate carries and interconnects a unitary disk store head and disk assembly, a disk store control, a disk file controller, and a data and control interface with the computer. The modular unitary plugin form factor, a single supervisory microcomputer controller and a memory containing basic input/output driver routines directly executable by the host computer allow the subsystem to be transported easily between host computers.

A method for using a modular unitary disk file subsystem

A servo calibration method is disclosed for a disk drive including a rotating data storage disk journalled to a frame and having a multiplicity of concentric data tracks defined on a major surface thereof and an actuator structure under the control of a programmed servo control microprocessor in response to coarse position information fed back to the microprocessor by a position encoder, and to fine position information fed back to the microprocessor by a data transducer reading from servo information prerecorded on the major surface of the disk, the actuator structure for moving the data transducer to each selected one of the data tracks during track seeking operations and for maintaining the transducer aligned with the data track during track following data read and/or write operations. Carried out during initialization, the method includes the steps of: automatically seeking to a region of radially outermost tracks, reading fine position information recorded in the single sector of each of a plurality of outermost tracks, and recording the outer track fine position information in memory; automatically seeking to a region of radially innermost tracks, reading fine position information recorded in the single sector of each of a plurality of innermost tracks, and recording the inner track fine position information in memory; for each data track to which a seek is initially commanded, which track lies between the outermost track region and the innermost track region, calculating with the microprocessor means a track centerline correction value lying between the outer track fine position information and the inner track fine position information, and applying the track centerline correction value so calculated as an offset value to the rotary actuator to correct any discrepancy between nominal track centerline defined by the position encoder.

A compact polyphase optical encoder subassembly for installation in host equipment is disclosed. The subassembly includes a moveable scale; and, a unitized rotatable housing for aligning a light source, a mask and a photodetector array having at least a pair of photodetector areas symmetrically disposed about an axis of rotation of the housing and responsive to light energy from the light source in further response to relative position of the scale. The housing further includes in its preferred form a bolt having a widened head and a threaded shank for passing through an opening in a base of the host, a threaded nut engageable with the shank opposite to the head for thereby securing the bolt to the base, and a compressible washer for enabling a predetermined range of vertical compression between the head and the base as the nut is tightened on said shaft. The housing further includes a light source holder which in preferred form comprises a central support, a reflective surface in optical alignment with the photodetector array and being aligned and supported by the central support, and a lateral arm spaced away from the central support, the lateral arm for holding the light source in optical alignment with the reflective surface, whereby the subassembly may be made very compact in terms of height and still provide a substantial distance between the light source and the mask, thereby minimizing penumbra effects.

Compact polyphase optical position encoder

An improved apparatus and method is disclosed for controlling the position of one moveable member relative to another. In the disclosed preferred embodiment of a rotating disk memory system, the moving member is a head carriage structure and the other is a frame carrying a rotating data storage disk. From externally supplied position selectron information, and from internally determined polyphase position information, open loop position changing movements are determined and carried out in accordance with monitored incremental polyphase position information generated during the movement. When a destination location has been reached one or more servo systems close loop in order to maintain the moving member precisely at the newly commanded location. A rotor for moving the member is an aspect of the present invention.

Growing community of inventors

Monte Sereno, CA, United States of America

Joel N Harrison