- A program that controls a device. Every device, whether it be a printer, disk drive, or keyboard, must have a driver program
- Many drivers, such as the keyboard driver, come with the operating system.
- For other devices, you may need to load a new driver when you connect the device to your computer.
- In DOS systems, drivers are files with a .SYS extension. In windows environments, drivers often have a .DRV extension.
- A driver acts like a translator between the device and programs that use the device.
- Each device has its own set of specialized commands that only its driver knows, In contrast, most programs access devices by using generic commands.
- The Driver, therefore, accepts generic commands from a program and then translates them in to specialized commands for the device.
Notes
