Emulation of semiconductor and magnetic auxiliary storage devices with semiconductor memory

摘要

A compact, low power consumption, light weight, highly reliable and high speed information processing system is provided by employing a semiconductor auxiliary storage device in lieu of conventional magnetic storage or memory elements, such as floppy or hard disks. An access request to such a magnetic storage or memory element is converted to an access request for the semiconductor auxiliary storage which uses semiconductor integrated circuits without requiring any modification of existing programs, such as, application software and disk operating systems. A memory circuit in the semiconductor auxiliary storage comprises ROM and RAM, and a portion of the ROM contents is copied into the RAM so that access modification for programs and data is permitted while the basic program and data is retained in a nonvolatile manner.