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Attempts by the guest operating system to access the hardware are routed to the virtual device driver in the host operating system as e.g., function calls. The virtual device driver can also send simulated processor-level events like interrupts into the virtual machine. Virtual devices may also operate in a non-virtualized environment.
This article presents a list of commands used by MS-DOS compatible operating systems, especially as used on IBM PC compatibles. Many unrelated disk operating systems use the DOS acronym and are not part of the scope of this list. In MS-DOS, many standard system commands are provided for common tasks such as listing files on a disk or moving ...
The device driver.. Device drivers are programs which allow software or higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device. These software components act as a link between the devices and the operating systems, communicating with each of these systems and executing commands.
Printer drivers are typically implemented as filters. They are usually named the front end of the printing system, while the printer spoolers constitute the back end. Backends are also used to determine the available devices. On startup, each backend is asked for a list of devices it supports, and any information that is available.
One of the major improvements the PCI Local Bus had over other I/O architectures was its configuration mechanism. In addition to the normal memory-mapped and I/O port spaces, each device function on the bus has a configuration space, which is 256 bytes long, addressable by knowing the eight-bit PCI bus, five-bit device, and three-bit function numbers for the device (commonly referred to as the ...
Even CD-ROMs are not handled by all controllers. Device Type is a 5-bit field reported by a SCSI Inquiry Command; defined SCSI Peripheral Device Types include, in addition to many varieties of storage device, printer, scanner, communications device, and a catch-all "processor" type for devices not otherwise listed.
A hardware abstraction layer (HAL) is an abstraction layer, implemented in software, between the physical hardware of a computer and the software that runs on that computer. . Its function is to hide differences in hardware from most of the operating system kernel, so that most of the kernel-mode code does not need to be changed to run on systems with different hardwa
Although most modern systems typically use device drivers that directly set the video mode, it is not feasible for hobbyist systems to have a device driver for every video card - a problem that also plagues older, unsupported systems such as Windows 98. Such systems instead can drop into Real mode to switch the video mode, then draw to the ...