Patent ID: 8738819

Claim:
A decoding extender card comprising: a substrate containing wiring traces for conducting signals; first contact pads along a first edge of the substrate, the first contact pads for mating with a memory module socket on a motherboard; a test socket, mounted to the substrate, for receiving a memory module during testing and programming; wherein the wiring traces on the substrate include lines carrying address and control signals from the motherboard that are passed through to the test socket at pads for connecting to memory chips on the memory module; data wiring traces on the substrate, the data wiring traces carrying data read from the memory module inserted into the test socket to the first contact pads so that the data read from the memory module inserted into the test socket is transferred to the motherboard; wherein the memory module inserted into the test socket is removable and replaceable by another memory module for testing; an intercepting decoder chip, mounted on the substrate, the intercepting decoder chip decoding a predefined function on the wiring traces, the predefined function being a function of the lines carrying address, data, and control signals from the motherboard; and a filter in the intercepting decoder chip for activating a decoding indicator when a memory-test program accesses the memory module and for ignoring accesses of the memory module by an operating system and not activating the decoding indicator for operating system accesses, whereby operating system accesses are filtered out.