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 into specialized commands for the device.
