2871 results about "EEPROM" patented technology

The present invention provides a system for implementing surgical procedures which includes an ultrasonic surgical hand piece having an end-effector, a console having a digital signal processor (DSP) for controlling the hand piece, an electrical connection connecting the hand piece and the console, and a memory, such as an EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory), disposed in the electrical connection. The console sends a drive current to drive the hand piece which imparts ultrasonic longitudinal movement to the blade. The console reads the memory and authenticates the hand piece for use with the console if particular or proprietary data are present in the memory. Moreover, to prevent errors in operating the hand piece, the memory can store certain diagnostic information which the console can utilize in determining whether the operation of the hand piece should be handicapped or disabled. Furthermore, the memory can be used to reprogram the console, if needed.

A battery section of an electronic endoscope is provided with an EEPROM. The EEPROM stores charging time and the number of charging of batteries, necessary for calculating remaining power of the batteries, and customized information for assigning functions to first, second and third switches of an operation section. A remaining-power calculator calculates the remaining power of the batteries based on a relation between discharge voltage and discharge time of the batteries as well as on the charging time and the number of charging of the batteries read out from the EEPROM. A function assignment circuit assigns the functions to the first, second and third switches in accordance with the customized information read out from the EEPROM.

A re-programmable non-volatile memory system, such as a flash EEPROM system, having its memory cells grouped into blocks of cells that are simultaneously erasable is operated in a manner to level out the wear of the individual blocks through repetitive erasing and re-programming. This may be accomplished without use of counts of the number of times the individual blocks experience erase and re-programming but such counts can optionally aid in carrying out the wear leveling process. Individual active physical blocks are chosen to be exchanged with those of an erased block pool in a predefined order.

Pre-stored no-touch or no-hover (no-event) sensor output values can initially be used when a sensor panel subsystem is first booted up to establish an initial baseline of sensor output values unaffected by fingers or other objects touching or hovering over the sensor panel during boot-up. This initial baseline can then be normalized so that each sensor generates the same output value for a given amount of touch or hover, providing a uniform response across the sensor panel and enabling subsequent touch or hover events to be more easily detected. After the initial normalization process is complete, the pre-stored baseline can be discarded in favor of a newly captured no-event baseline that may be more accurate than the pre-stored baseline due to temperature or other variations.

In a printer of the present invention, an EEPROM that carries out sequential access and has a relatively small storage capacity is applied for storage elements mounted on both black and color ink cartridges, which are detachably attached to the printer. Pieces of information relating to each ink cartridge, for example, pieces of information on remaining quantities of respective inks in the ink cartridge, are stored in the storage element of the ink cartridge. A format of addressing adopted in the storage elements of the ink cartridges Is different from that adopted in an EEPROM incorporated in a printer main body of the printer. A control IC provided in the printer accordingly converts the storage format of addressing, before writing the information into the storage elements of the ink cartridges. In the printer, a RAM is mounted with the control IC on a carriage, and the pieces of information to be written Into the storage elements of the ink cartridges are temporarily registered in the RAM. The pieces of information are then written into the respective storage elements of the black and color ink cartridges, for example, at a timing of a powe-off operation. The signal lines and the memory used in the course of writing the information into the storage elements are identical with the signal lines, through which print data are transmitted to a print head mounted on the carriage of the printer, and the memory, in which the print data are stored. The arrangement of the present invention reduces the manufacturing cost of the ink cartridge and also enables size reduction of the whole printer.< / PTEXT>

A mechanism for patching read only memory (ROM) instructions in an embedded system is provided. The embedded system includes non-volatile memory such as a ROM, a RAM and an EEPROM. In one configuration, the ROM contains application modules (subroutines) that are subordinate to a flag status. The flag status indicates to the subroutine whether to execute the ROM instructions in the ROM or the extended instructions in the EEPROM. The instructions in the EEPROM may be used to patch or to extend the behaviors masked in the ROM instructions. The extended instructions in the EEPROM may reuse the ROM instructions in the ROM without resulting in recursive actions.

In an ink jet printer of the present invention, in order to reduce the manufacturing cost, an inexpensive EEPROM enabling only sequential accesses is applied for storage elements incorporated in a black ink cartridge and a color ink cartridge. The data array of a memory cell included in each of the storage elements mounted on the ink cartridges is determined in such a manner that a second storage area, in which rewritable data, for example, data on remaining quantities of inks in the ink cartridge, are stored, is accessed prior to a first storage area, in which read only data are stored. This configuration enables the rewritable data to be securely written into the second storage area even after a power-off operation. The second storage area has two memory divisions allocated to each ink, that is, a first ink remaining quantity memory division and a second ink remaining quantity memory division. Latest data on the remaining quantity of each ink is alternately written into these two memory divisions. Alternatively, the latest data on the remaining quantity of each ink is written into these two memory divisions in a duplicated manner. Each ink remaining quantity memory division has a write complete flag to determine whether or not a writing operation has been completed normally in the ink remaining quantity memory division. This arrangement enables the remaining quantities of the respective inks to be monitored accurately and continuously.

A NAND architecture non-volatile memory device and programming process is described that programs the various cells of strings of non-volatile memory cells by the application of differing word line pass voltages (Vpass) to the unselected word lines of the memory cell string or array during an programming cycle. In one embodiment of the present invention, the differing word line pass voltages (Vpass) are utilized depending on the placement of the memory cell in the NAND memory cell string. In another embodiment of the present invention, the differing word line pass voltages (Vpass) are utilized to compensate for faster and slower programming word lines / memory cells.

A re-programmable non-volatile memory system, such as a flash EEPROM system, having its memory cells grouped into blocks of cells that are simultaneously erasable is operated to perform memory system housekeeping operations in the foreground during execution of a host command, wherein the housekeeping operations are unrelated to execution of the host command. Both one or more such housekeeping operations and execution of the host command are performed within a time budget established for executing that particular command. One such command is to write data being received to the memory. One such housekeeping operation is to level out the wear of the individual blocks that accumulates through repetitive erasing and re-programming.