Tracy S Thorpe

US Patent:

54386748, Aug 1, 1995

Filed:

Jul 1, 1994

Appl. No.:

8/270109

Inventors:

Richard V. Keele - San Diego CA
Craig D. Mautner - San Diego CA
Tracy J. Thorpe - Encinitas CA
Sidney R. Thompson - San Diego CA
Michael C. Goodsell - Chula Vista CA

Assignee:

Data/Ware Development, Inc. - San Diego CA

International Classification:

G06F 500

US Classification:

395404

Abstract:

An optical disk system emulating a 3480 magnetic tape subsystem having one or more magnetic tape drives, includes a VMEGate channel attached processor for receiving CCW tape commands, a SCSI board for controlling SCSI optical disk drives, a serial I/O board for controlling jukebox optical disk media handlers for automatically robotically loading and unloading optical disks containing virtual tape data into the optical disk drives, a cache RAM for buffering data between the channel and the optical disk drives, operator consoles for emulating the 3480 magnetic tape subsystem control panels, an SBC computer and VME bus for central control of the system, and floppy and hard disk drives for storing emulation SBC programs and disk directories, to enable the system to exhibit an organization of virtual tape data into a system of pointers and user records of the virtual tapes, a reallocatable mapping between magnetic tape drives and the optical disk drives, disk directories cross referencing virtual tapes VSNs to optical disks for locating particular optical disks storing requested VSNs, and to enable WORM optical media to appear to the channel as rewritable magnetic tape through the conversion of tape commands to jukebox load operations and optical disk drive seek operations for increased performance, said system emulates a 3480 magnetic tape subsystem by using jukeboxes to automatically load optical media into and out of optical disk drives and by using a dynamic re-allocation method for maintaining a one-to-one mapping between the virtual magnetic tape drives and the optical disk drives, which reduces access speed to the data.

US Patent:

54559260, Oct 3, 1995

Filed:

Jun 20, 1994

Appl. No.:

8/265514

Inventors:

Richard V. Keele - San Diego CA
Craig D. Mautner - San Diego CA
Tracy J. Thorpe - Encinitas CA
Sidney R. Thompson - San Diego CA
Michael C. Goodsell - Chula Vista CA
Philip J. Erdelsky - San Diego CA

Assignee:

Data/Ware Development, Inc. - San Diego CA

International Classification:

G06F 1200

US Classification:

395404

Abstract:

An optical disk storage system emulates a magnetic tape subsystem by virtual addressing of data recorded on write once optical disk media having a predetermined group of available sectors for rewriting a disk ID, a predetermined plurality of bands of available sectors for rewriting a virtual tape directory to virtual tape VSNs, and, available sectors for rewriting virtual tape maps and rewriting user records, the tape maps have data portions for simulating tape marks and interblock gap and for addressing blocks of data within the virtual tapes, the virtual tape directory has pointers for pointing to tape maps, and the system rewrites the tape directory, tape maps and user records so as to function as a rewritable magnetic tape.

US Patent:

52768651, Jan 4, 1994

Filed:

May 6, 1992

Appl. No.:

7/879956

Inventors:

Tracy J. Thorpe - Encinitas CA

International Classification:

G06F 1100

US Classification:

395575

Abstract:

A backup device and method for automatically backing up the memory of a computer. The device is installed inline between the electrical outlet and the computer, and also inline between the keyboard and computer. The user initiates a backup/powerdown routine by moving a switch on the device to "off". This in turn disables the keyboard and sends a keycode string from the device to the computer to begin execution of a previously specified backup routine. When the backup is completed, the device de-energizes a relay in the power line to the computer which powers down the computer.