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:
Feb. 15, 2000
Filed:
Dec. 09, 1997
John S Lacombe, Tomball, TX (US);
Peter M Yee, Houston, TX (US);
Rene R Gaudet, Cypress, TX (US);
Robert Van Cleve, The Woodlands, TX (US);
Compaq Computer Corporation, Houston, TX (US);
Abstract
A nonintrusive monitoring system is used to determine the onset and duration times of an electrical power outage-caused down condition of a computer without requiring a pre-power outage polling of a running component of the computer and thereby degrading computer system performance. In response to a supply power outage the monitoring system switches on a battery-powered counter device, representatively a digital counter or a real time clock, and then switches the counter device back off in response to resumption of power supply to the computer. A software portion of the monitoring system then detects the count value of the counter device, and utilizes the count value to compute the onset and duration times of the previous power outage. Using an alternative nonintrusive technique, the monitoring system permits the counter device to run during power supply to the computer, while using the computer system clock to generate periodic time stamps, and disables the counter device during computer supply power outages. Upon resumption of supply power to the computer, the monitoring system compares the time stamp information to the count value to determine the onset and duration times of the previous supply power outage.