Motorola USB08 - Manual (Page 135)

Universal USB Device Driver (USBIO)
Introduction
USB08 Evaluation Board Designer Reference Manual
MOTOROLA Universal USB Device Driver (USBIO) 135
E.2 Introduction
USBIO is a generic Universal Serial Bus (USB) device driver for
Windows 98, Windows Millennium (ME), and Windows 2000. It is able to
control any type of USB device and provides a convenient programming
interface that can be used by Win32 applications.
This document describes the architecture, the features, and the
programming interface of the USBIO device driver. Furthermore it
includes instructions for installing and using the device driver.
The reader of this document is assumed to be familiar with the
specification of the Universal Serial Bus and with common aspects of
Win32-based application programming.
E.3 Overview
Support for the Universal Serial Bus (USB) is built into the Windows 98,
Windows Millennium, and Windows 2000 operating systems. These
systems include device drivers for the USB Host Controller hardware, for
USB Hubs, and for some classes of USB devices. The USB device
drivers provided by Microsoft support devices that conform with the
appropriate USB device class definitions made by the USB
Implementers Forum. USB devices that do not conform to one of the
USB device class specifications, e.g. in the case of a new device class
or a device under development, are not supported by device drivers
included with the operating system.
In order to use devices that are not supported by the operating system
itself the vendor of such a device is required to develop an USB device
driver. This driver has to conform to the Win32 Driver Model (WDM) that
defines a common driver architecture for Windows 98, Windows
Millennium, and Windows 2000. Writing, debugging, and testing of such
a driver means considerable effort and requires a lot of knowledge about
development of kernel mode drivers.
By using the generic USB device driver USBIO it is possible to get any
USB device up and running without spending the time and the effort of
developing a device driver. Especially, this might be useful during