A device driver is a program that controls a particular type of device that is attached to your computer. There are device drivers for printers, displays, CD-ROM readers, diskette drives, and so on. When you buy an operating system,
many device drivers are built into the product. However, if you later
buy a new type of device that the operating system didn't anticipate,
you'll have to install the new device driver. A device driver
essentially converts the more general input/output instructions of the
operating system to messages that the device type can understand.
In computing, a device driver (commonly referred to as a driver) is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer. A driver provides a software interface
to hardware devices, enabling operating systems and other computer
programs to access hardware functions without needing to know precise
details of the hardware being used.
A driver typically communicates with the device through the computer bus or communications subsystem to which the hardware connects. When a calling program invokes a routine
in the driver, the driver issues commands to the device. Once the
device sends data back to the driver, the driver may invoke routines in
the original calling program. Drivers are hardware-dependent and operating-system-specific. They usually provide the interrupt handling required for any necessary asynchronous time-dependent hardware interface.
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