hardware drivers

[yellowcat]

i had a thought late last night and if i have had it then some smarter person than me must have too

the problem is this when you get a new scanner, printer, camera......etc you have to load up new software with th eappropriate driver on to your computer. I think XP must come with half a tonne of drivers you are hardly ever going to use!!

so why not have the driver on the hardware on a memory chip. memory is so cheap these days.

the computer says hello new thing, give us your driver, and now i understand what you are i will let you work!!

thoughts please

M

[MrLinus]

A few thoughts:

What if the driver is incompatible?

What about upgrades?

What about risk of overwriting the chip by a virus (you then lose the original drivers assuming that the memory is upgradable)?

If the memory is not upgradable, what kind of issues are downloading original source, then connecting to internet and upgrading? (additional annoyance for users)

What about the above for "networked" devices like printers, scanners, etc? (what if your an admin and have to do this 1,000 times?!)

What if memory is corrupt (basically lemon chipset)?

You'd need more than just a memory chip, wouldn't you? Something to transfer the data to and from the specific chip to the CPU/OS.

Just random questions/thoughts on it..

[fourdc]

Why not?

It's kind of like the USB, it was a big breakthrough. Even though Commodore 64s connected everything through the same daisy chained serial port and it was slow and cumbersome at the time and everyone thought it was bad.

"Self Driving" peripherals, I like it. A few more clock cycles on the chips and it will be practical.