Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!agate!violet.berkeley.edu!izumi
From: izumi@violet.berkeley.edu (Izumi Ohzawa)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: device drivers
Message-ID: <20044@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 7 Feb 89 02:52:03 GMT
References: <6858@fluke.COM> <509@rpi.edu>
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In article <509@rpi.edu> fargo@pawl.rpi.edu (Ethan M. Young) writes:
>I too am interested in writing device drivers in either Turbo C or Turbo Pascal
>I have IBM's DOS Technical Reference Manual for DOS v3.00, but they only give
>examples in assembly language.
>

I don't think you can write DOS Installable device drivers
(those you install with DEVICE= ...  line in CONFIG.SYS) using
Turbo C or Turbo Pascal or MSC.  I wouln't say never, but
it sounds awfully difficult.

You could write a TSR driver which does equivalent things, but
you will lose the ability to open the device via standard
library functions like;

     fp = fopen("DEVNAME", "wb");

With a TSR driver, you usually have to do I/O functions via
software interrupt calls.  If you don't need these devices to
work at DOS level, i.e., if you access these devices only from
your application programs (e.g., D/A or A/D converters),
writing the driver as a TSR is the easiest way.  And Turbo C and
Turbo Pascal do allow that.

Izumi Ohzawa