Abstract: A communication system and method are provided for authenticating a portable radio from a plurality of shared portable radios. The authentication controls access to user personal profiles and public safety service applications associated with a public safety agency. A firearm having a firearm user ID stored therein, communicates the firearm user ID over short range communications to the portable radio. The firearm user ID may be used for single factor authentication or combined with a PIN entry for multi-factor authentication.

Abstract: A computer is provided having a system interface unit coupled between main memory, a CPU bus, and a PCI bus and/or graphics bus. A hard drive is typically coupled to the PCI bus. The system interface unit is configured to perform a data integrity protocol. Also, all bus master devices (CPUs) on the processor bus may perform the same data integrity protocol. When a CPU requests read data from main memory, the bus interface unit forwards the read data and error information unmodified to the processor bus bypassing the data integrity logic within the system interface unit. However, the system interface unit may still perform the data integrity protocol in parallel with the requesting CPU so that the system interface unit may track errors and possibly notify the operating system or other error control software of any errors. In this manner processor read latency is improved without sacrificing data integrity. Furthermore, the system interface unit may still track errors on processor reads.