interrupts signaled by the command ready signal during the priority block erasure are to be ignored then once the priority block erasure has completed the global interrupt flag will be reset so that the interrupt request caused by the program word command in the secondary queue will be serviced finally referring again to initial state 510 if an erase block command is received when both the primary and secondary queue slots are empty then the erase block command will enter the primary queue slot and state 550 will be entered as indicated by path erase 514 in state 550 the erase block command in the primary queue will be serviced by the micro controller subsequent transitions from state 550 will occur as has been previously discussed referring now to fig6 a diagram is presented that illustrates circuitry for determining the status of a particular memory block of the nonvolatile memory device one command that can be serviced by the command state machine is a block status query command the block status query command is a request regarding the ready status of a block of the memory array a query block is specified when the block status query command is issued the query block is the particular block of the memory array that is to have its ready status determined if no erase block or program word commands for the query block are pending then the block status returned by the block query command for the query block will be that of ready if on the other hand at least one program word or erase block command is pending for the query block then the status returned will be busy if there was no command queue then the status of the query block.