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:
Jan. 31, 2006
Filed:
Jan. 15, 2004
Ben Wei Chen, Fremont, CA (US);
Tzu-yih Chu, San Jose, CA (US);
Sun-teck See, San Jose, CA (US);
Super Talent Electronics, Inc., San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
A flash-card exchanger has two modes of operation. When a host personal computer (PC) is connected to a Universal-Serial-Bus (USB) connector, the flash-card exchanger operates in a card reader mode, allowing the host to read data from removable flash-memory cards inserted into connector slots of the flash-card exchanger. When the host PC is not connected, a USB flash-memory thumb or key-chain drive can be inserted into a second USB connector. A USB dual-mode microcontroller acts as a USB host, reading data from the removable flash-memory card and writing the data to the USB-memory key drive using USB packets. Since the USB-memory key drive is small and removable, the user can upgrade to larger storage capacities by plugging in a larger-capacity USB-memory key drive. A flash-exchanger program executing on the USB dual-mode microcontroller copies data from an input-output bus and generates USB packets to the USB-memory key drive.