Patents by Inventor Michael R. Stephens

Michael R. Stephens has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Publication number: 20030070727
    Abstract: A multi-purpose tool system including a workpiece support assembly and tool mount assembly operatively secured to a base structure. The tool mount assembly and workpiece support assembly typically are configured to be movable to provide tools and workpieces supported by those structures with a wide variety of movements relative to the base structure. In particular, the tool mount assembly may be configured to permit rotation of a tool mounted thereon about multiple axes of rotation relative to the base structure. In addition, the base structure may be configured to include a way assembly having one or more elongate way members, where the way assembly is modular to permit selective insertion and removal of one or more additional elongate way members to provide the way assembly with an adjustable length.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 17, 2001
    Publication date: April 17, 2003
    Inventor: Michael R. Stephens
  • Patent number: 5568491
    Abstract: The knowledge based system identifies the occurrence of a failure within the customer equipment and functions using its rules, hypotheses and collected data to isolate the functional resource which is the source of the error in the customer equipment and, whenever possible, "fence" or isolate the failed functional resource that has caused the error. In addition, the knowledge based system makes use of resource related rules to remove a resource or set of resources available for concurrent other failure management operations. The resource related rules allow resources to function in any one non-operational or operational mode or to functional simultaneously in multiple non-operational modes.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 20, 1994
    Date of Patent: October 22, 1996
    Assignee: Storage Technology Corporation
    Inventors: David G. Beal, Joetta S. Chikira, Fletcher L. Hill, Nancy R. Jurestovsky, Michael R. Stephens
  • Patent number: 5410546
    Abstract: The present invention discloses a method and apparatus for computing CRC codes for fixed length page buffers of user data where the user data arrives from a transmission device in variable length packets with the packet contents being out of sequential order. The received data is written to a storage device after being restored to the correct sequential order. The data packets are comprised of a header portion and a data portion. The transmission and compression methods commonly employed by the transmission device dictates that the header portion of each packet follows the data portion. The present invention computes a complete CRC code for the data stored in a page buffer in real time as the packets are received by using several registers for saving intermediate CRC codes and circuitry to combine partial CRC codes for those packet portions received out of order.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 1, 1993
    Date of Patent: April 25, 1995
    Assignee: Storage Technology Corporation
    Inventors: Keith G. Boyer, Kenneth R. Burns, Thomas H. Gohl, Terry R. Gottehrer, Bernie R. Marasco, Michael R. Stephens, Robert D. Thompson
  • Patent number: 4872073
    Abstract: Data is received at a variable input rate and recorded on a longitudinal medium in the form of fixed length data blocks with variable length spacing between the blocks, utilizing a transducer mounted on a rotating scanner drum. The input data rate may change between various recording/playback operations by a ratio of 1:100 or more, but during a particular operation it remains constant. The data blocks played back from the medium are sequentially stored in a memory at the internal data transfer clock rate, which is also utilized to control the scanner rotation. The data is read from the memory at a constant rate which is adjusted for each particular operation. A memory status control signal is m provided indicating a predetermined level of fullness obtained by the memory. That control signal is compared in time to a control signal indicating occurrence of the beginning of a next data block.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 2, 1988
    Date of Patent: October 3, 1989
    Assignee: Ampex Corporation
    Inventors: Jeffrey L. Fincher, Michael R. Stephens