Lecture

Device Driver
A device driver is a program that controls a particular type of device that is
attached to your computer.

A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices. A device driver

acts as a translator between the hardware device and the programs or operating
systems that use it. A device driver may also be called a software driver.

There are device drivers for printers, displays, CD-ROM readers and so on.
When you buy an operating system, many device drivers are built into the product.
There are various types of device drivers for I/O devices such as keyboards, mice,
CD/DVD drives, controllers and so on.

When first turning on a computer, the OS works with device drivers and the basic
input/output system (BIOS) to perform hardware tasks. Without a device driver,
the OS would not be able to communicate with the I/O device.
Some Windows programs are virtual device drivers. These programs interface
with the Windows Virtual Machine Manager. There is a virtual device driver for
each main hardware device in the system, including the hard disk drive controller,
keyboard, and serial and parallel ports.
Drivers may interface with:
 Printers
 Video adapters
 Network cards
 Sound cards
 I/O buses of various sorts (for pointing devices such as mice, keyboards, USB,
etc.)
 Computer storage devices such as hard disk, CD-ROM, and floppy disk buses
(ATA, SATA, SCSI)
 Image scanners
 Digital cameras etc.