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:
Nov. 04, 2003
Filed:
Jul. 13, 2000
Maximino Aguilar, Austin, TX (US);
Norbert M. Blam, Austin, TX (US);
James Michael Stafford, Round Rock, TX (US);
Charles Edward Tysor, Leander, TX (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A method of and software for booting a network computer with universal boot code is disclosed. Initially, the type of a boot device is determined from among a set of possible boot devices. A command in a high level boot code segment of the boot code software is then translated to a command executable by the boot device based upon the determined device type. The converted command is then executed on the boot device to transfer data between the network computer and the boot device. The boot code is preferably compatible with a variety of boot devices including a hard disk boot device, an NFS server boot device, as well as a TFTP server boot device. In an embodiment in which the boot device is a TFTP boot device, a READ command from the high level boot code is translated to a TFTP read request. The data transferred by the TFTP read request may be stored in a file cache on the network computer. During a subsequent high level boot code READ command, the software interface may determine if the requested data is cached in the file cache, and if so, it may retrieve the data from the file cache. If the high level boot command is a SEEK command, and the boot device is a TFTP device, the converted command may include a TFTP read request. The software interface may determine the relative location of a file location indicated by the SEEK command and a current location of a file pointer and abort the current TFTP transfer if the file location indicated by the SEEK precedes the current location of the file pointer. The interface may then resend a TFTP read request to advance the file pointer to the file location indicated by the SEEK command. In this manner, the software interface and device specific segments can emulate a file type device when the boot device is a TFTP device.