Abstract: A stray field shielding structure for die attaching onto a magnetic random access memory chip or to other chips to prevent loss of memory due to magnetic fields or radiation is made by a method which provides a thick layer of magnetic material which is precise in its dimensions and adapted for placement on individual die by existing pick and place machines and die attach bonders. The magnetic shielding material is cut to a desired size by etching to remove all burrs and debris and is then attached only to good die using a die attach film of thermoset plastic or a gob of epoxy adhesive.

Abstract: A super abrasive impregnated singulation saw blade is made by depositing grindable friable super abrasive particles while electro depositing or electroless depositing a strong binder metal such as nickel on a form or mandrel. The deposited super abrasive on the upper side protrudes from the side of the blade and are ground down to or near the binder metal to plannerize the sides of the saw blade and true and balance the saw blade. Post operations include electro polishing to expose equal amounts of super abrasive on the cutting edge or on all sides. Antifriction particles may be added in the side walls or deposited on the outside.

Abstract: A new and improved electrical connector is provided for Ball Grid Array (BGA) devices and Direct Chip Attach (DCA) devices that solves the prior art problems of mismatch in the coefficient of thermal between a semiconductor die and its substrate, PC board or carrier. The electrical connector consists of a resilient loop of wire that is permanently wire bonded at a first and a second bond position to an electrode or contact pad of a die or an interposer. The closed loop of wire is stable in the X and Y direction and resilient in the Z direction which enables the wire bonded die or interposer to be temporarily attached to a carrier or test board for all forms of tests as well as being removable and reworkable even after being permanently soldered in place on a substrate or PC board. Since the loop shaped connectors are resilient in X, Y and Z directions, the die or interposer may be clamped onto a PC board or substrate to provide a lead free electrical connection that does not require any underfill.

Abstract: An N-way set associative data cache system comprises a cache controller adapted to receive a request for data and instructions. The cache controller includes a cache buffer register for storing the requests for a line of information in the form of a page tag address and line address. The line address is stored in the buffer register as a pointer into a directory associated with each of the N-ways for determining where the line being accessed resides. If the page tag address matches one of the page entry addresses in one of the directories, there is a hit, but if not, the line of data must be fetched by a cache fill request. The line of data is retrieved from an L2 cache or main memory and written into the line of one of the ways at the line address being accessed. A novel LRU ordering tree or look-up table is provided for determining concurrently the one line in the number of N-lines in the cache to be replaced with the new line of data in the event of a miss.

Abstract: A stand up walker for supporting body weight in a standing position with a pair of upper lift arms pivotally mounted on a walker frame and having lift spring mounted on the walker frame. In the preferred embodiment a pair of lift springs comprise gas springs for asserting a lifting force to the body by a body seat and harness coupled to the upper lift arms. However, the upper lift arms may be provided with resilient handles that apply the lifting force under the armpits or a combination of lifting forces may be employed.

Abstract: In a system for enhancing the integrity of transmitted data files from one memory to a remotely located memory there is provided an original data stream which is compressed by a known data compression code. The compressed data stream may be in a variable length format and is not provided with the usual parity code bits. To assure that compressed data is received both without loss and error free, the compressed data stream is divided into groups of n blocks having N bytes. At the end of the group of nN byte blocks, a block or check code is inserted into the compressed data stream. The transmitted and received compressed data stream is processed as n blocks of N bytes having a received block check code. The received blocks of data are used to generate new block check codes which are compared with the transmitted block check codes to determine if a one bit error has occurred in any of the n blocks of N bytes.

Abstract: An automatic tape feeder for use in component placement machines includes a novel sprocket wheel for driving component carrier tapes to a gross position by an electric drive motor. Before the electric drive motor reaches the final position desired, it is deactivated or turned off. A novel indexing cam is connected to the sprocket drive wheel. A spring loaded pawl or positioning cam is moved into a vee-shaped groove on the indexing cam so as to achieve an actual fine position of the indexing cam as well as the teeth on the sprocket wheel. By first achieving a gross position with the drive motor and then a fine position with an indexing cam and pawl, it is possible to achieve a positioning accuracy in a pick up station which is as accurate as the sprocket holes and component pockets in the carrier tape. The present invention has achieved accuracies of ± one 1,000th of one inch which exceeds positioning accuracies of devices known heretofore.

Abstract: The present invention teaches a sawn wafer with ultra clean bonding pads on die which enhance the strength of wire bond and results in higher yield and improved reliability of packaged semiconductor die. Clean wafers ready for dicing are coated with a removable insulating water soluble non-ionic film which enhances clean saw cuts and reduces buildup. The protective film is hardened by heat and resists removal by cooling water used in dicing saws. However, after dicing the protective film is removable in a wafer washer using high pressure warm D.I. water. After removal of the protective film the electrode pads are virtually as clean as before dicing. The film may be used as a protective layer until the sawn wafer is ready for use.

Abstract: The need to maintain the quality of air in a home has become more of a problem in new high efficiency tight houses so that governmental regulations are being proposed for a minimum change of fresh air. If too much cold outside fresh air is introduced into such homes at a single source, the room with the fresh air is usually too cold and/or unbalanced. The present invention avoids cooling any one room while maintaining heat efficiency. When the home has a gas fireplace, the exhaust gases are preferably directed through an air-to-air cross flow heat exchanger which preheats the quality air passing into a forced air furnace system. In modified embodiments of the present invention, make-up quality air is mixed with the room air and heated in the heat exchanger of the fireplace. The preheated room air from the fireplace is preferably connected to the supply/return of a forced air furnace system and distributed to all rooms to provide uniform heating.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for creating ablation-free visible markings on a multi-layer hard disk magnetic storage media by laser-induced deformation while maintaining the integrity of the protective carbon layer, and without destroying the multi-layered structure of the media. The apparatus includes a laser generator, a rotatable optical plate and a beamsplitter by which the fluence of the beam can be controlled without altering the power setting to the laser generator, a beam sampler for determining the fluence of the beam, and an optical plate which acts with the beamsplitter to eliminate unwanted reflection of the laser beam. The laser beam is steered by a beamsteerer to a hard disk held in a material handling unit. This technique is highly suitable for marking or labeling finished hard disks for the purposes of identification and traceability, without creating any short-term or long-term contamination problems. The corresponding storage media so marked are also claimed.

Abstract: Gas fireplaces are provided with commercially available gas valves that are similar to gas valves in furnaces and boilers. Such gas valves may be controlled manually, by thermostat or by solenoid valves which turn the fireplace burner ON and OFF and HIGH and LOW using a closed loop radio frequency transceiver system. The present invention provides an improved voice or sound actuated gas valve for fireplace burners. In the preferred embodiment of the present invention, a microphone is coupled to a voice actuated electronic control module which converts analog sound signals to digital control signals. The sound may be music or other non-voice sounds employed to modulate the flames from the fireplace burner. Preferably the sounds are voice commands that are predetermined and preferably comprise a recognition command followed by an actuation command.

Abstract: In an incremental encoder signal processing system there is provided a pair of sensor/encoders adapted to generate a quadrature pair of analog positioning signals that are converted to digital signals and processed to produce a digital position vector and a digital error signal. The digital position vector is processed in a novel logic analyzer to determine if sequential position vectors are indicative of an invalid change of state. The digital position vector signal is filtered in a novel low pass digital filter and the before-and-after signals at a plurality of states of the digital filter are analyzed and compared to detect conditions which permit the system to produce optimum rates of change in the servo-controller which controls a servo-drive at optimum speeds without creating error conditions and to detect error conditions in the sensor/encoder.

Abstract: In a high speed, high processing gain PN spread spectrum acquisition system an analog signal comprising a high speed PN code is received and converted to a high speed digital format. A demuxer is employed to divided the high speed digital signal into lower speed multiplexed portions. The lower speed multiplexed portions of the digital signal are processed in a plurality of parallel channels which employ correlators coupled to coherent accumulators and non-coherent accumulators coupled to the output of the coherent accumulators to provide a signal having sufficient energy to permit detection of one of a plurality of partial PN replica codes as the one code which is synchronized with the received analog signal comprising a high speed PN code and to synchronize with the PN replica code generator.

Abstract: In a data decompression system of the type having a self-compiling dictionary for building or replicating codes used for decoding incoming code values, there is provided a decoded string dictionary or memory for storing plural characters representing decoded strings. The decoded strings may be stored in a modified dictionary replacing string codes or stored in a separate variable length memory as blocks of characters having predetermined length and accessed using a finder memory. If the decoded string becomes too long to be stored in a fixed length memory, a conventional decoder dictionary may be used to reduce the size of the strings stored for direct access and read out to a recovered data stream.

Abstract: In a system for economically and continuously transmitting data files from one location to a remote location there is provided a high speed mainframe computer adapted to read a data file and to determine if the process to be performed on the data requires a large amount of mainframe processor cycle time. If so the data file is down loaded to a memory accessible by a much less expensive single chip type dedicated computer that is particularly well suited to perform the process that would require high mainframe processor time cost. The output of the dedicated computer in coupled to a communication network for transmittal to the remote location. In the preferred embodiment-of the present invention first-in-first-out (FIFO) data queues are employed to maintain optimum utilization of the dedicated computer and transfer of the data files.

Abstract: A novel dialogue design system is provided for creating dialogue applications of the type understood and used by automatic speech recognition systems. The dialogue design system is loaded into a computer having a display and a control keyboard and comprises a novel Dialogue Assistant (DA). The DA is controlled from the keyboard and comprises a navigator screen for defining and connecting compartments of the dialogue application. Each said compartment of a dialogue application is provided with an associated design and editing screen which enables the designer to create, build and edit compartments with associated sounds and variables. Compartments or parts of the dialogue may be played back or used in an actual or simulated environment until the application is proven and ready for use. The dialogue flow may be converted into a machine readable code used by interactive voice response systems with a minimum requirement for manual or machine software implementation.

Abstract: The present invention provides a novel method and system for obtaining maximum system speed performance for compressing coded data characters in a serial data stream by replacing strings of data with code values stored in a dictionary when strings are first observed as unique strings in the data stream. A novel pointer address is generated to represent new strings to be searched in the dictionary. The novel pointer address comprises a string code portion representative of the last matched string found in the dictionary and appended thereto an extension character code portion representative of the next character taken from the input data stream. The dictionary is constructed large enough to provide a unique memory location for every possible pointer address. The unique pointer address, representative of a string of data in the input data stream, is employed as an address pointer to access the memory.

Abstract: A rust proof indoor-outdoor convertible fireplace is provided with an open side having access into the combustion chamber box. The combustion chamber box is provided with an inclined bottom panel to drain water from rain and snow products from said combustion box. Support structures are provided on or above said inclined bottom panel for supporting a ceramic floor in a horizontal plane juxtaposed and above said inclined bottom panel. The inclined bottom panel is provided with a hole or aperture and forms the top panel of a water tight box that is used to house a gas control valve and electrical controls when the outdoor fireplace is converted from wood burning to a gas burning fireplace.

Abstract: The present invention relates to post manufacturing operations for improving the working life of known bonding tools such as capillaries, wedges and single point TAB tools of the type used in the semiconductor industry to make fine wire or TAB finger interconnections. After the desired bonding tool is manufactured to predetermined specifications, dimensions and tolerances, it is placed in a sputtering chamber with hard target material with an ionizing gas. A controlled volume of sputtered hard material is generated at high temperature by plasma ion bombardment and deposited onto the working face of the bonding tool while the tool is held at a temperature that prevents distortion. A very thin amorphous hard layer is bonded onto the working face of the bonding tool which increases the working life of most tools by an order of magnitude and there is no requirement for additional processing.

Abstract: A prefabricated open-ended fireplace box for use in fireplace assemblies is molded from a slurry of refractory ceramic fibers and a non-organic binder. The prefabricated fireplace box is preferably formed in or over a mold which provides an accurate shape to the green or semi-rigid open end box which must be dried or partially fired while on the mold to avoid warping or distortion while being removed from the mold. A rigid surround trim in the form of a C-shape is placed in or on the mold at the open ends of the fireplace box. At least one attachment flange of the surround trim is integrally molded into walls of the fireplace box so that at least the open end of the semi-rigid fireplace box is made rigid when removed from the mold.