Method and apparatus for performing multiple simultaneous error detection on data having unknown format

摘要

An error may be detected and corrected from among a plurality of data values retrieved from a compact disk-read only memory (CD-ROM). As a stream of data values which have been retrieved from the CD-ROM are retransmitted by an appropriate DMA device, two different error detection schemes are simultaneously applied to identical copies of the retrieved data. The retrieved data is then evaluated to determine in which format data has been stored on the CD-ROM. A condition value which has been generated by the algorithm corresponding to the determined format of data on the CD-ROM is then evaluated to determine the probability of an error condition in the retrieved data. The two error detection schemes may differ solely in the location of the data values which are evaluated for errors.