Patent ID: 7639444

Claim:
A method for updating a read-detect channel, comprising: forwarding a first signal directly from an analog to digital converter to a read-detect channel; processing the first signal in the read-detect channel that includes an adaptive equalizer and a phase-locked loop, wherein the adaptive equalizer includes one or more programmable registers with coefficients that are used to generate a second signal to match a target channel; processing the second signal with a data flow to determine error information, wherein the data flow removes formatting features from data in the second signal, corrects errors in the data, and reformats the data for transmission to a host computer; and while the read-detect channel having the adaptive equalizer continues to process additional signals a channel auxiliary processor performs: receiving one or more samples of the first signal from the read-detect channel; storing the one or more samples in a buffer; receiving the error information from the data flow; determining whether to dynamically replace values of the one or more programmable registers based on the error information; and when it is determined that the values of the one or more programmable registers are to be replaced, determining new values for the one or more programmable registers using the one or more samples in the buffer; and replacing existing values for the one or more programmable registers with the determined new values.