Abstract: A method and apparatus for initializing an optical recording medium comprising a phase change material using a series of flashes of light. A series of low-power, high duty cycle flashes of light are produced to initialize the media to a crystalline form, onto which data may be recorded. In accordance with another aspect of this invention, a spiral flash bulb with centrally located connectors comprises the flash illumination source for initializing the optical recording media.

Abstract: The present invention includes a Command Queuing Engine (CQE) that is a firmware-assist block which processes some of the firmware tasks related to command and context management preferably for SCSI. When enabled, CQE will decode SCSI commands as they arrive, and determine if DMA contexts can be automatically configured and started to transfer the data for those commands. CQE can also program DMA contexts to automatically return status information either after the disk has completed a transfer (as in non-cached writes) or after the DMA transfer is completed (as in reads or cached writes). CQE also utilizes a buffer-based linked-list to queue the SCSI commands as they arrive for future DMA context configuration. The present invention provides automated recognition and linking of commands belonging to a common thread, i.e., are sequential. The present invention also provides extensive thread boundary information and flexible firmware control for reordering commands.