Abstract: Techniques for employing a television set and a television set controller as the control interface for devices which themselves do not have display capability and for services provided via the telephone network. The techniques involve control apparatus which is connected to the telephone network and a television set and is responsive to inputs from a hand-held controller for the television set. The control apparatus outputs a screen which contains control selections to the television set and the user employs the controller to make a selection. The control apparatus then performs the control function specified by the selection. One application is a telephone messaging system: integral with the control apparatus is a system which can answer calls and store voice messages, fax messages, character-string messages, and script messages. The control apparatus plays the voice messages on the television set and provide screens to the television set which display the fax and character-string messages.

Abstract: The present invention provides a method and apparatus in a data storage device of a data storage system under the control of a microprocessor for preventing a microprocessor stall upon the occurrence of a power failure during read/write operations. During normal operations, files are written to a first storage area of the data storage device where a first flag associated with each file is set when the writing of the respective file has successfully completed. Upon the occurrence of a power failure, a data storage device initialization routine is commenced upon reboot of the microprocessor. During initialization, an analysis phase is begun to generate sequences of events for at least those files not having the first flag set. The events comprise memory operations and associated data and are each re-executable upon interruption of its execution and before execution of another event without modifying results of a previous execution of the respective event.