A computer mouse is a hand-held pointing device that detects two-dimensional motion relative to a surface. This motion is typically translated into the motion of a pointer on a display, which allows a smooth control of the graphical user interface of a computer.
In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabling operating systems and other computer programs to access hardware functions without needing to know precise details about the hardware being used.
Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad variety of USB hardware exists, including 14 different connector types, of which USB-C is the most recent and the only one not currently deprecated.
In computer programming, event-driven programming is a programming paradigm in which the flow of the program is determined by events such as user actions, sensor outputs, or message passing from other programs or threads. Event-driven programming is the dominant paradigm used in graphical user interfaces and other applications that are centered on performing certain actions in response to user input. This is also true of programming for device drivers.
In computing, the Windows Driver Model (WDM) – also known at one point as the Win32 Driver Model – is a framework for device drivers that was introduced with Windows 98 and Windows 2000 to replace VxD, which was used on older versions of Windows such as Windows 95 and Windows 3.1, as well as the Windows NT Driver Model.
Microsoft SideWinder was the general name given to the family of digital game controllers developed by Microsoft for PCs. The line was first launched in 1995. Although intended only for use with Microsoft Windows, Microsoft SideWinder game controllers can also be used with macOS, Mac OS 9 with third-party software, and Linux.
Hardware abstractions are sets of routines in software that provide programs with access to hardware resources through programming interfaces. The programming interface allows all devices in a particular class C of hardware devices to be accessed through identical interfaces even though C may contain different subclasses of devices that each provide a different hardware interface.
A human interface device or HID is a type of computer device usually used by humans that takes input from humans and gives output to humans.
A KVM switch is a hardware device that allows a user to control multiple computers from one or more sets of keyboards, video monitors, and mice.
The architecture of Windows NT, a line of operating systems produced and sold by Microsoft, is a layered design that consists of two main components, user mode and kernel mode. It is a preemptive, reentrant multitasking operating system, which has been designed to work with uniprocessor and symmetrical multiprocessor (SMP)-based computers. To process input/output (I/O) requests, they use packet-driven I/O, which utilizes I/O request packets (IRPs) and asynchronous I/O. Starting with Windows XP, Microsoft began making 64-bit versions of Windows available; before this, there were only 32-bit versions of these operating systems.
In computing, the USB human interface device class is a part of the USB specification for computer peripherals: it specifies a device class for human interface devices such as keyboards, mice, game controllers and alphanumeric display devices.
There are a number of security and safety features new to Windows Vista, most of which are not available in any prior Microsoft Windows operating system release.
A Bluetooth stack is software that is an implementation of the Bluetooth protocol stack.
A computer keyboard is a peripheral input device modeled after the typewriter keyboard which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys to act as mechanical levers or electronic switches. Replacing early punched cards and paper tape technology, interaction via teleprinter-style keyboards have been the main input method for computers since the 1970s, supplemented by the computer mouse since the 1980s.
Some of the new features included in Windows 7 are advancements in touch, speech and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, support for additional file formats, improved performance on multi-core processors, improved boot performance, and kernel improvements.
IEEE 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple in cooperation with a number of companies, primarily Sony and Panasonic. Apple called the interface FireWire. It is also known by the brand names i.LINK (Sony), and Lynx.
VRPN is a device-independent, network-based interface for accessing virtual reality peripherals in VR applications. It was originally designed and implemented by Russell M. Taylor II at the Department of Computer Science of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. VRPN was maintained and supported by Sensics while it was business. It is currently maintained by ReliaSolve and developed in collaboration with a productive community of contributors. It is described more fully at vrpn.orgArchived 2022-07-09 at the Wayback Machine and in VRPN-VRST.
eXtensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI) is a computer interface specification that defines a register-level description of a host controller for Universal Serial Bus (USB), which is capable of interfacing with USB 1.x, 2.0, and 3.x compatible devices. The specification is also referred to as the USB 3.0 host controller specification.
Longene is a Linux-based operating system kernel intended to be binary compatible with application software and device drivers made for Microsoft Windows and Linux. As of 1.0-rc2, it consists of a Linux kernel module implementing aspects of the Windows kernel and a modified Wine distribution designed to take advantage of the more native interface. Longene is written in the C programming language and is free and open source software. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2).
WebUSB is a JavaScript application programming interface (API) specification for securely providing access to USB devices from web pages.
