The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 01, 1998
Filed:
Aug. 23, 1996
Darrell L Boatwright, Cedar Rapids, IA (US);
Rickey G Austin, Cedar Rapids, IA (US);
Norand Corporation, Cedar Rapids, IA (US);
Abstract
A battery powered device having a plurality of PCMCIA (or other) type slots uses monitoring circuitry to detect the onset of battery power depletion. In response to the onset detection, control circuitry attempts to selectively remove power from ones of the plurality of slots. With the battery load thus lessened, the battery powered device has a greater opportunity to execute emergency procedures such as alert the user and save operational data. A processing circuit selectively overrides the control circuit in the attempt to prevent the removal of power. The processing circuit may also enable a presently disabled slots at and for any time period after the detection of depletion onset. Further, the processing circuit selectively coordinates power down if need be based on the consideration of characteristics of certain installed cards. The processing circuit may also calculate and adjust (through power down) loading after onset detect based on estimates of remaining battery life.