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Windows Device Driver Programming Series
A Windows Device Driver Primer (1/10): Introduction
Yashavant Kanetkar and Asang Dani
Index
- Myths about Device Drivers
- Early Days Of Application Programming
- Current Scenario Of Application Programming
- Why We Need Device Drivers At All
- Microsoft's Solution
- What is a Device Driver?
- Categories Of Device Drivers
Current Scenario Of Application Programming
Under the Windows operating system, application programmers are never allowed to bypass the Windows API while interacting with hardware.
As a result, writing device specific code automatically gets avoided.
The following figure shows the relationship between application software, the Windows OS, a device driver and the hardware.
Because of the model shown in the above figure, both hardware and applications become "loosely coupled."
This means that the dardware can continue to evolve independent of the applications. The applications are no longer required to be rewritten to take advantage of new features of the new hardware devices. It is the device driver for the new hardware that would do this.
Thus, this model makes the applications "future proof."
