UBI EasyCoder 601 XP – Service Manual Ed. 1
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Chapter 15 CPU Board
Flash Memory (P20-P22), cont'd.
The flash memory retains its content during power off without any
battery backup. It consists of sectors that can be erased and written
to over and over again. This is done automatically in the back-
ground. At power-up, the flash memory is reorganized to avoid
fragmentation. Before a sector is erased, its content will be copied
to a TMP (temporary) area as a safety measure if something should
go wrong, e.g. a power failure. Thus, there is a 256 kbyte TMP
sector for the file operating system (device "c:") and a 16 kbyte TMP
sector for the parameters sector.
The Boot sector is necessary for UBI Fingerprint to start. There is
a boot sector in all flash SIMMs at delivery, but the firmware will
only accept a boot sector of the SIMM fitted in P22 (marked
“ROM2 Boot-Bank”). The boot sector is only protected when the
flash SIMM is fitted in socket P22 (ROM2). If moving flash SIMMs
from one CPU board to another, make sure that the SIMM contain-
ing the boot sector is fitted in P22 (ROM2) on the other board, or the
boot sector will be overwritten.
The UBI Fingerprint firmware, including all standard fonts, bar
code generators and images, the UBI Shell startup program, the
present setup values and some standard application programs
1
, are
stored in four 256 kbyte and one 192 kbyte sectors. These sectors
are called by a common name the “Kernel”.
As illustrated in the table above, 2 sectors with a total nominal
capacity of 512 kbyte plus a 256 kbyte TMP sector are used for the
Intel VFM (Virtual Small Block Manager) file operating system
(FOS), where the user can store his programs, files, images, and
fonts. Practically, around 500 kbyte are available to the user.
Exactly which fonts, images, files and programs are stored in FOS
may vary between customers and applications.
The parameters sectors stores the current setup and odometer values
and a few other “invisible” files with data, that are required for the
printer to start up with the same settings as when it was shut off, e.g.
information on the position of the label gaps vs the LSS.
The printer's permanent memory can be expanded by fitting one or
two more flash memory SIMMs in sockets ROM1 and ROM0.
Although identical to the flash SIMM in ROM2, all of the sectors
can be used by the file operating system, except the 256 kbyte TMP
sector. Thus, each additional flash SIMM will provide 1,792 kbyte
extra storage memory. The Flash SIMMs are custom-made and can
only be ordered from Intermec.
Flash Memory Available to the User (kbytes):
No of SIMMs
ROM2
ROM1
ROM0
SUM
1 SIMM
512
–
–
512
2 SIMMs
512
1,792
–
2,304
3 SIMMs
512
1,792
1,792
4,096
15.2 Circuits and
Straps,
cont'd.