Patent ID: 7722468

Claim:
A gaming machine for playing a game and granting a payout based on the result of the game, comprising: an input device configured to receive a wager; an exterior housing arranged to contain a plurality of internal gaming machine components therein or thereabout; a master gaming controller configured to control one or more aspects of said game that is played by using said wager, said master gaming controller configured to communicate instructions to at least one of said plurality of internal gaming machine components; a memory hub in communication with said master gaming controller and configured to facilitate communications between said master gaming controller and one or more of said plurality of internal gaming machine components; at least one Random Access Memory magnetoresistive storage device in communication with said memory hub and said master gaming controller, and configured to store gaming machine computer code thereupon; and at least one Read Only Memory magnetoresistive storage device having at least a portion thereof that can not be written to or have any code stored thereupon altered while installed within said gaming machine, said at least one Read Only Memory magnetoresistive storage device being in communication with said memory hub and said master gaming controller, and configured to store gaming machine computer code thereupon, wherein at least a portion of said at least one Read Only Memory magnetoresistive storage device contains computer code regarding at least one gaming machine program or process selected from the group consisting of: a specific game application, an operating system, a boot loader, a boot up process, an initialization process, an authentication process, a configuration process and a diagnostics process, and wherein one or more of said at least one Random Access Memory magnetoresistive storage device and said at least one Read Only Memory magnetoresistive storage device are configured to provide computer code stored thereupon to said master gaming controller at a rate faster than 8 MHz, wherein one of said at least one Read Only Memory magnetoresistive storage device is configured to store an initial basic input/output system (BIOS) and an extended BIOS, wherein said initial BIOS and said extended BIOS are configured to be executed by said master gaming controller to launch said game application, wherein said initial BIOS is configured to direct to said extended BIOS.