Forced clear of a memory time-out to a maintenance exerciser

Abstract

A maintenance exerciser makes requests of certain inoperative and malfunctioning storage memory bank portions of a large scale storage memory unit concurrently that normal system requestors do request of remaining, correctly functional, storage memory bank portions of such storage memory unit. All requests are collectively prioritized in a priority network which, save for the circuit of the present invention, will not advance to successive prioritizations until each currently prioritized request is positively acknowledged by the requested storage memory bank. When the maintenance exerciser makes abundant and repetitive requests to storage memory banks which are non-responding, resulting that such requests would time-out save for the circuit of the present invention, then such requests of the maintenance exerciser which would time-out would, by suspending successive prioritizations, significantly impede the concurrent access of normal system requestors to remaining correctly functional and responsive storage memory banks. A time delay circuit accomplishes a forced clear of an unacknowledged request from a maintenance exerciser to an unresponsive storage memory bank in the present invention, thereby simultaneously forceably precluding, or clearing, that the maintenance exerciser should experience a time-out to the requested memory while allowing the priority network to continue successive prioritizations.