11. The method as in claim 9 further comprising, exclusively ORing the present status of said first linear block code word with said extended Golay code word excluding the overall parity bit to generate a Hamming distance check result, after said predetermined number of bits of said extended Golay code word have been examined.
11. The method as in claim 9 further comprising, exclusively ORing the present status of said first linear block code word with said extended Golay code word excluding the overall parity bit to generate a Hamming distance check result, after said predetermined number of bits of said extended Golay code word have been examined. 12. The method as in claim 11 further comprising, obtaining the data word from the present status of said first linear block code word when said Hamming distance check result includes less than three logical ones.