[greenG4]

Ok. Mamy people who are more knowledgeable than myself may laugh and point at this, but I was thinking about this and wondering why it has not been done.

So many people have problems with divers and such on their computer not working. (Yes, sometimes even X) Here's what I'm thinking:

Peripheral devices like printers, CD/DVD burners, and scanners usually have some sort of RAM chip in them that identifies the device to the computer. Whay can that chip not be made to hold the driver, and the computer access the driver off of the device? That way ANY time you went to plug in a new peripheral it would work. Period. Real plug and play. Please tell me why this would not work.

[ebisix]

Originally posted by greenG4:
Ok. Mamy people who are more knowledgeable than myself may laugh and point at this, but I was thinking about this and wondering why it has not been done.

So many people have problems with divers and such on their computer not working. (Yes, sometimes even X) Here's what I'm thinking:

Peripheral devices like printers, CD/DVD burners, and scanners usually have some sort of RAM chip in them that identifies the device to the computer. Whay can that chip not be made to hold the driver, and the computer access the driver off of the device? That way ANY time you went to plug in a new peripheral it would work. Period. Real plug and play. Please tell me why this would not work.

Interesting idea. It is so simple yet no one has done it.

[veryniceguy2002]

Originally posted by greenG4:
Ok. Mamy people who are more knowledgeable than myself may laugh and point at this, but I was thinking about this and wondering why it has not been done.

So many people have problems with divers and such on their computer not working. (Yes, sometimes even X) Here's what I'm thinking:

Peripheral devices like printers, CD/DVD burners, and scanners usually have some sort of RAM chip in them that identifies the device to the computer. Whay can that chip not be made to hold the driver, and the computer access the driver off of the device? That way ANY time you went to plug in a new peripheral it would work. Period. Real plug and play. Please tell me why this would not work.

Yeah, that would be good!

However, it's easier said than done...

Firstly, the purpose of a driver is to allow a computer knows how to talk to the peripheral. The problem with greenG4's idea is that how does the computer knows how to talk to the peripheral initially to get the driver of the peripheral's memory???

It is possible to establish a common protocol such that the initially communication can be done in a standard manner, but this would requires not only the chips used in the peripheral support it, but all OSes who wish to take advantage to modify to deal with it. Furthermore, some of the driver function might interfere with some computers or OS, so the "one size fits all" solution might not work (that's why you can seperate driver for different OS or computer chip).

Don't get me wrong, I would love to have greenG4's idea implemented, but it's just too difficult for a forseenable future...

[greenG4]

Originally posted by veryniceguy2002:
It is possible to establish a common protocol such that the initially communication can be done in a standard manner, but this would requires not only the chips used in the peripheral support it, but all OSes who wish to take advantage to modify to deal with it. Furthermore, some of the driver function might interfere with some computers or OS, so the "one size fits all" solution might not work (that's why you can seperate driver for different OS or computer chip).

Don't get me wrong, I would love to have greenG4's idea implemented, but it's just too difficult for a forseenable future...

Yes, it should be possible to have a standard communications protocol for peripherals. But, why couldn't the device hold drivers for for the main OS's like X,XP,ME etc? If you don't have a new OS to take advantage of the technology, then you use drivers like normal.

[firefly]

What if the drivers had bugs in them and needed to be updated?

I think it would cause more problems than just installing the drivers off a CD or downloading them.

[greenG4]

Originally posted by firefly:
What if the drivers had bugs in them and needed to be updated?

I think it would cause more problems than just installing the drivers off a CD or downloading them.

If for some reason an update was needed, it could still easilly be done.

[fritzair]

Originally posted by greenG4:
If for some reason an update was needed, it could still easilly be done.

How about ethernet?
The chips would be cheap, we all have one and the cable would be the same for once.
Packets would be sent in the usual manner with the printer having to do the manipulations rather than the computer. Couldn't color, page size and such be embedded in the data?

Great thought- except Epson, HP and the rest wouldn't make any money on cables and upgrading to faster technology.(serial, parallel, USB, etc....)

Mike