METHOD, APPARATUS AND ARTICLE TO LOAD NEW INSTRUCTIONS ON PROCESSOR BASED DEVICES, FOR EXAMPLE, AUTOMATIC DATA COLLECTION DEVICES

Methods, apparatus and articles facilitate the loading of a set of new instructions to replace set of existing instructions on a processor based device, for example an automatic data collection device. For example, a new operating system may replace an existing operating system using an executable that disables interrupts and/or exceptions. The new operating system may execute with, or without booting. The set of new instructions may be fragmented to fit the block size of a nonvolatile programmable memory, and/or may be compressed. Validation values such as check sums and/or error correction may be employed.