Device Management & Drivers
Computer Science: OCR A Level, topic 2.1.5
Device Management
The operating system must be able to manage external hardware.
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.
Examples of peripheral devices
- Examples of devices that the device manager manages are:
- Keyboard.
- Mouse.
- Printer.
- Webcam.
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.
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.
Test yourself on Device Management & Drivers
What is the purpose of device drivers?