Intermec EasyCoder 501 XP Service Manual page 95

Chapter 15 CPU Board
15.2 Circuits, cont.
94
Flash Memory (P20, P21, and P22), cont.
The fl ash memory retains its content at power off without any bat-
tery backup. It consists of sectors that can be erased and written to
over and over again. This is done automatically in the background.
At power-up, the fl ash memory is reorganized to avoid fragmen-
tation. Before a sector is erased, its content will be copied to a
TMP (temporary) area as a safety measure if something should go
wrong, for example a power failure. Thus, there is a 256K TMP
sector for the fi le operating system (device "c:") and a 16K TMP
sector for the parameters sector.
The Boot sector is necessary for Intermec Fingerprint to start.
There is a boot sector in all fl ash SIMMs at delivery, but the fi rm-
ware will only accept the boot sector of a SIMM fi tted in P22
(marked "ROM2 Boot-Bank"). The boot sector is only protected
when the fl ash SIMM is fi tted in socket P22 (ROM2). If moving
fl ash SIMMs from one CPU board to another, make sure that the
SIMM containing the boot sector is fi tted in P22 (ROM2) on the
other board, or the boot sector will be overwritten.
The Intermec Fingerprint fi rmware is stored in four 256K and one
192K sectors. These sectors are called by a common name the
"Kernel".
As illustrated in the table on previous page, two sectors with a total
nominal capacity of 512K plus a 256K TMP sector are used for the
Intel VFM (Virtual Small Block Manager) fi le operating system
(FOS), where the user can store his programs, fi les, images, and
fonts. Practically, around 500K are available to the user.
Exactly which fonts, images, fi les and programs are stored in FOS
may vary between customers and applications.
The parameters sectors store the current setup and odometer values
and a few other "invisible" fi les with data, that are required for the
printer to start up with the same settings as when it was shut off,
for example information on the position of label gaps in relation to
the LSS.
The printer's permanent memory can be expanded by fi tting one or
two fl ash memory SIMMs in sockets ROM1 and ROM0. 2MB and
4MB fl ash SIMMs can be mixed, but the one with the boot sector
(fi tted in P22) must not be smaller than any of the other two. Flash
SIMMs are custom-made and can only be ordered from Intermec.
Intermec EasyCoder 501 XP – Service Manual Ed. 4