Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!sun!imagen!qmsseq!pipkins From: pipkins@qmsseq.imagen.com (Jeff Pipkins) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.programmer Subject: Re: .SYS (device drivers) that are actually .EXEs? Message-ID: <142@qmsseq.imagen.com> Date: 5 Jul 90 23:19:41 GMT References: <141@qmsseq.imagen.com> <552@csource.oz.au> Reply-To: pipkins@imagen.com (Jeff Pipkins) Organization: QMS Inc., Mobile, Alabama Lines: 26 In article <552@csource.oz.au> david@csource.oz.au (david nugent) writes: >In <141@qmsseq.imagen.com> pipkins@qmsseq.imagen.com (Jeff Pipkins) writes: > >>It is also possible to create a plain old .EXE file program that can be >>invoked from the command line that can install itself as a device driver. >>[deleted] > > >DESQview comes with small utility called DEVICE.COM (around 600 bytes or >so) which allows loading _some_ device drivers - namely those that don't >link into the chain. [deleted...] It would not be any great feat to create a program that would load a traditional character device driver and link it into the chain. I'm not sure what extra would be involved for doing the same with a block device driver. Also, the loaded device driver could be removed later. The combination would give you a dynamically configurable system without rebooting. I've been asked for such programs many times, but not by anyone who was willing to pay for it, and time allocated for charity work is getting shorter all the time ;-) Additional interesting functions are to rename devices that are already loaded, and to rotate devices with the same name. (If more than one device driver is loaded with the same name, the one most recently loaded is closer to the beginning of the chain, so the older one is no longer used.)