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:
Jun. 06, 2000
Filed:
Apr. 30, 1998
Mark A Piwonka, Tomball, TX (US);
Louis B Hobson, Tomball, TX (US);
Jeffrey D Kane, Spring, TX (US);
Randall L Hess, Cypress, TX (US);
Compaq Computer Corporation, Houston, TX (US);
Abstract
A computer system for flashing Extended System Configuration Data (ESCD) and associated variables to a flash read-only memory (ROM) is provided. During Power-On-Self-Test (POST) code, a ROM image is copied from an ESCD sector of a read-only memory to an ESCD original buffer and an ESCD write buffer. The ESCD write buffer may be updated by POST code. Following the POST operations, the contents of the ESCD write buffer are copied to an ESCD runtime buffer. The contents of the ESCD original buffer or the ESCD sector are compared to the contents of the ESCD runtime buffer. If the contents of the ESCD runtime buffer differ from the contents of the compared buffer or sector, SMI code flashes the ROM image in the ESCD runtime buffer to the flash ROM. If the ESCD runtime buffer is the same as the contents of the compared buffer or sector, a ROM flash it not performed. POST is then exited and the computer system is booted. During runtime, if a write is performed to ESCD data or an associate variable, the ESCD runtime buffer is updated with the ESCD data or variable provided for the write operation. The SMI code then flashes the ROM image in the ESCD runtime buffer into the ESCD sector to save the ESCD data or variable provided by the write operation.