DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF INVENTION AND BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT INVENTION A.
Overview of Invention FIG.
1 shows an overview of an embodiment of the invention.
A kernel 1 includes environmental map 2, sequencer 3, global data structure 4, initialization map 5, service map 6 and queues 7 and 11.
Device description tables 8 and adapter description tables 9 are linked to kernel 1 through global data structure 4 which serves as a table interface.
The kernel and the linked description tables form a device driver.
The library 10 is a directory which contains kernels, adapter description tables and device description tables which are stored as files.
Device description tables include physical device description tables (B1.
DEV, B2.
DEV, C1.
DEV, C2.
DEV, .
.
.
), logical device description tables (DU.
DEV, .
.
.
), and pseudo device description tables (P1.
DEV, P2.
DEV, P3.
DEV, .
.
.
).
Each of the kernels (KERNEL1.
SYS, KERNEL2.
SYS, KERNEL3.
SYS, .
.
.
) in library 10 supports a different operating system.
For example, KERNEL1.
SYS is compatible with the MS-DOS operating system, KERNEL2.
SYS is compatible with the OS/2 operating system, and KERNEL3.
SYS is compatible with the Unix operating system.
Other kernels can be added to the library which support (i.
e.
are compatible with) other computer operating systems.
The environmental map 2 is a computer program that translates operating system requests into kernel requests.
An operating system request is an input-output request which is directed to a device (e.
g.
hard disk drive, printer, Bernoulli drive, floppy disk drive, tape drive, optical disk, modem, etc.
).
The kernel requests are common to all kernels in library 10, i.
e.
, the kernels in library 10 each share and use a common set or list of kernel requests.
Thus, kernel requests are not unique to a particular kernel but are common to each of the kernels in library 10.
This allows a single device or adapter description table created for a particular device or adapter to be used with (i.
e.
linked to) any of the kernels in library 10 and, therefore, with any of the operating systems for which those kernels are created
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