Abstract: EEH methods are used during the boot process to actively disable a defective PCI adapter, thereby allowing the system boot to continue without disruption. This allows faulty adapters to be present in the machine without interrupting the boot process. The slots appear to be empty and the devices/adapters residing therein can be actively “hot swapped” out without altering the rest of the machine state.

Abstract: A more efficient method of handling instructions in a computer processor, by associating resource fields with respective program instructions wherein the resource fields indicate which of the processor hardware resources are required to carry out the program instructions, calculating resource requirements for merging two or more program instructions based on their resource fields, and determining resource availability for simultaneously executing the merged program instructions based on the calculated resource requirements. Resource vectors indicative of the required resource may be encoded into the resource fields, and the resource fields decoded at a later stage to derive the resource vectors. The resource fields can be stored in the instruction cache associated with the respective program instructions. The processor may operate in a simultaneous multithreading mode with different program instructions being part of different hardware threads.

Abstract: According to one aspect of the invention, sending an electronic message to two or more sets of recipients includes associating a first portion of an electronic message with a first set of one or more recipients. A second portion of the electronic message is associated with a second set of one or more recipients. The electronic message is sent to the recipients such that the first set of recipients receives the first portion of the electronic message and the second set of recipients receives the second portion of the electronic message.

Abstract: In a method for providing customized services to a person having a disability, a first message is transmitted by a wireless client device and is received by a server device. The client device is operable by the person with the disability. The first message is transmitted by using a close-range, standard-protocol radio signal. The server device sends a first response message to the client device by using the protocol. The first response identifies a contact phone number. The person with disability dials the contact phone number, thereby generating a second message that uniquely identifies the person. The server device receives the second message on the wireless carrier network. The server device performs a search on a database for a record matching the person. On finding a match, a second response is sent to the client device describing a list of customized services configured for the person with disabilities.

Abstract: A system and method for managing multiple proxy servers by a client computer. In one embodiment, the client computer's configuration is set to the fastest proxy server available. In another embodiment, a proxy table is accessed by the client computer to determine which proxy to use for a given web address. When a web address is included in the table, the corresponding proxy server is used to request the contents of the web address. If the web address is not included in the table, a default proxy server is used to request the information. In another embodiment, a periodic test is made to determine the speed of the current proxy server. If the speed is less than a predetermined threshold, the available proxy servers are all tested and the best-performing proxy server is selected. In another embodiment, aspects of each of the above-described embodiments are combined to provide a proxy server to a client computer based upon either a given web address (URL) or the fastest current proxy server.

Abstract: In traditional Fibre Channel systems, remote devices connected to the Fibre Channel network using a bridge or included in a storage enclosure are not tracked. A device identifier corresponding to the remote device is obtained from the remote device. The device identifier may include the remote device's serial number and other identifying information pertaining to the device. The remote device's vendor and product identifiers are retrieved and matched against a table of known vendor/product identifiers. If the match is successful, a predefined routine is located based on the match. The predefined routine is repeatedly used to retrieve the device identifier from the remote device. Communication with the remote device continues while the device identifier matches a previously stored device identifier corresponding to the device. When the device identifier no longer matches, an error occurs indicating that the remote device has been removed or swapped.