Appeal No. 2002-1319 Page 8
Application No. 08/974,971
DeRoo. DeRoo discloses (col. 2, lines 10-16) that the invention
relates to providing non-volatile memory sectors in conventional
memory devices. Specifically, DeRoo is directed to providing
non-volatile "boot block" sectors in an EEPROM. From this
disclosure of DeRoo, we find that DeRoo discloses providing boot
block sectors in a non-volatile EEPROM memory.
DeRoo further discloses (col. 2, lines 57-60) that boot
block sectored EEPROMS are also referred to as flash ROMS. DeRoo
recognizes (col. 2, lines 65-57) that these devices typically
have a predefined protected memory area size, which limits their
flexibility in some applications. It is an object of the
invention (col. 3, lines 20-22) that the size of the non-volatile
sectors be selectable and automatically programmed at power on.
In addition, in an embodiment where the system reset is
deasserted immediately after power on, the size of the protected
EEPROM area is sensed on special strapping option pins and
automatically configures the non-volatile sector. "This allows
the size of the protected area to be changed on the manufacturing
line as needed for different applications. Once configured to
protect a specific size and location in the non-volatile memory,
the invention prevents the write control signal to the memory to
be asserted when the address of the data access requested by the
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