2.1.5

Device Management & Drivers

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Device Management

The operating system must be able to manage external hardware.

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Purpose of device manager

  • The device manager keeps track of which devices are connected to which ports.
  • The device manager also allows applications to read or write data to each device.
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Examples of peripheral devices

  • Examples of devices that the device manager manages are:
    • Keyboard.
    • Mouse.
    • Printer.
    • Webcam.
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Device drivers

  • The device manager works closely with special system software called device drivers.
  • Device drivers are a small piece of software that installs onto your computer.
  • Device drivers contain software that tell the operating system how to understand the data coming from the device and what format it expects to receive data in.
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Unique drivers

  • Each device driver is unique to the specific device, architecture and operating system
  • So a Windows 10 64-bit device driver for a printer would not work on Ubuntu Linux 64-bit.

Jump to other topics

1Components of a Computer

2Software & Software Development

3Exchanging Data

4Data Types, Data Structures & Algorithms

5Legal, Moral, Cultural & Ethical Issues

6Elements of Computational Thinking

6.1Thinking Abstractly

6.2Thinking Ahead

6.3Thinking Procedurally

6.4Thinking Logically

6.5Thinking Concurrently

7Problem Solving & Programming

8Algorithms

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