(under subclass 300) Subject matter comprising means or steps for communication between application programs or operating systems and callable interfacing programs (i.e., device driver programs) which further facilitate communication or control of peripheral hardware devices such as printers, disk drives, tape drives, CRT displays, etc.
(1) Note. Subject matter under this subclass is directed to high-level communication from an operating system or application program to a device driver program (i.e., program to program). Device drivers are software programs which are
custom designed to handle the low-level implementation details required to directly access and control a particular peripheral device (i.e., program to hardware). Device drivers, per se, are classified elsewhere. See the appropriate peripheral device area for details of how the low-level control of the hardware device is implemented.
SEE OR SEARCH THIS CLASS, SUBCLASS:
220+, for configuring a network computer.
SEE OR SEARCH CLASS
395, Information Processing System Organization,
101+, for static presentation computer, per se, and in particular subclasses 113 and 114 for reliability and data communication, per se. 710, Electrical Computers and Digital Processing Systems: Input/Output,
1+, for input/output data processing, per se, including subclass 8 for generalized peripheral configuration, per se, subclass 9 for address assignment, subclass 10 for configuration initialization, subclass 11 for protocol selection, and subclass 20 for concurrent input/output processing and data transfer.
711, Electrical Computers and Digital Processing Systems: Memory,
100+, for managing memory and for memory accessing and control.
