Patent ID: 7340509

Claim:
A reconfigurable appliance control system comprising: a dedicated appliance controller for controlling operation of an appliance; a appliance communication controller coupled to the appliance over an appliance communication connection, wherein said appliance communication controller configured to determine whether said dedicated appliance controller is in a program update mode before reprogramming said dedicated appliance controller, and the appliance reprogrammed during the program update mode, wherein said appliance communication controller configured to monitor progress of an instruction transfer from said appliance communication controller to said dedicated appliance controller by employing a pointer that identifies an instruction within a machine instruction block, and wherein said appliance communication controller configured to resume transmitting the machine instruction block to said dedicated appliance controller starting from the identified instruction within the machine instruction block upon receiving a retransmit request transmitted after detecting an error during transmission of the machine instruction block; and an external host controller coupled to the appliance communication controller over a host communication connection, the external host controller communicating an upgrade message for the appliance to the appliance communication controller.