Patent ID: 7725646

Claim:
A method of using a FLASH memory for a circular buffer, comprising: providing a circular buffer having a plurality of separately erasable sectors; designating one multi-bit data within each of the plurality of sectors of the circular buffer as a binary state indicator, settable to an empty state value indicating the sector is empty, and to a state value indicating a position of the sector in the circular buffer; setting the binary state indicator in each of the plurality of sectors to the empty state value by erasing each of the plurality of sectors; setting the binary state indicator in a first of the plurality of sectors to a value indicating the first sector being the last sector in the circular buffer; writing data to the first of the plurality of sectors; setting the binary state indicator in a second of the plurality of sectors to the last sector value and setting the binary state indicator in the first of the plurality of sectors to a value indicating the first sector being the first sector in the circular buffer; writing data to the second of the plurality of sectors; setting the binary state indicator in the second of the plurality of sectors to a value indicating the second sector being a middle sector in the circular buffer and setting the binary state indicator in a third of the plurality of sectors to a value indicating the third sector being the last sector in the circular buffer; and writing data to the third of the plurality of binary sectors.