Patent ID: 7676726

Claim:
A method of stabilizing an identification series of bits, the method comprising: iteratively reading the identification series, and logical OR'ing the identification series with a mask string after each read of the identification series, to produce a mask string having a first value in all positions of the mask string where bits in the identification series have never changed value during all of the readings of the identification series, representing stable bits, and a second value in all positions of the mask string where bits in the identification series have changed value during at least one of the readings of the identification series, representing unstable bits, counting a number of the unstable bits in the mask string having the second value, and selectively reporting a method failure code when the number of unstable bits exceeds a maximum allowable number of unstable bits, producing an identification string from the stable bits, calculating an identification code from the identification string, where the identification code does not disclose the identification string but is able to confirm the accuracy of the identification string and selectively correct a given number of bits within a corrupted identification string, and storing at least one of the identification string, the identification code, and the mask string.