Communication systems, such as paging systems, typically communicate messages from an originating device to one or more destination devices. These messages can include numeric and alphanumeric information for a user of the destination device. The destination device, for example, a selective call receiver or pager, typically presents the information received to the user by displaying the information on the pager's display.
Contemporary paging systems, necessarily using pagers having small form factors, offer limited message displays for communicating information. For example, an alphanumeric message is typically limited to 80 characters or less in length. These typical message lengths have provided users reasonably reliable delivery of messages while meeting a market need to communicate limited information in a wireless environment and with little delay.
Users, on the other hand, desire to receive information comprising much longer character lengths, such as from ten to one hundred times longer character lengths or more than historically available with selective call receivers. Examples of such desired information includes, for example, E-mail (Electronic mail) which can communicate overnight news and weather, sports coverage, stock quotes, etc.
The need for receiving longer length messages in a wireless environment has been met by integrating a selective call receiver or pager with a notebook, laptop or palmtop personal computer. The pager receives the message and is able to store that message in an internal memory. The personal computer next reads the contents of the pager's memory into the memory of the personal computer for output on the personal computers larger display. One of the major benefits of such wireless communication is the timeliness of receiving, and hence displaying the message. The longer messages, however, due to sheer size alone, necessarily increase the time for display as the message is transferred from pager memory to personal computer memory. If a pager has a memory and must transfer a message stored therein using a bus protocol, and the personal computer must re-transfer the stored message back to its own memory, then resources and time are wasted. This is because personal computers work best with memory type accesses, instead of communication protocols across a shared bus.
Thus, what is needed is a Radio Frequency (RF) device and a Personal Computer (PC) having a dual port memory as a communication means for memory type accesses therebetween.