This application claims priority to German Patent Application No. 103 36 877.9 filed Aug. 11, 2003, and is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
The present invention relates to a USB-based peripheral device for operation with a host system and to a method for starting up the USB-based peripheral device on a host system.
Host systems are normally operated with a large number of peripheral devices, such as keyboard, mouse, monitor, printer, scanner, external storage media and internal peripheral devices, such as interface cards or hard disks.
In the field of bus systems which are available today for connecting the peripheral devices to the host system, for example computer systems, the universal serial bus (USB) is becoming particularly important as a simple, universal standardized interface with a high level of scalability. One of the great advantages of the USB is the ability to add or remove peripheral devices during operation.
To achieve the full operability of the peripheral devices, a driver needs to be installed on the host system for each peripheral device.
To allow the drivers within a USB system to be configured as easily as possible, different USB-based peripheral devices are put into the device classes HUB (networks), audio (loudspeaker, microphone), printer, communication (modems), mass storage (hard disks) and human interface device (keyboards, mouse, joystick). The drivers required for these device classes are already included upon delivery of all current operating systems, such as Windows or Linux. When the peripheral device is connected to the USB, the connected peripheral device is identified by the host system using a hardware identifier transmitted by the peripheral device and then the device class is ascertained, said device class being transmitted by the peripheral device using a descriptor which the peripheral device uses in order to notify the host system of its attributes. Using the ascertained device class, the operating system loads the appropriate driver, which is then entered into the registry and can be assigned on the basis of this entry when the peripheral device is connected again in future.
For peripheral devices which do not belong to any of the defined device classes, the driver needs to be loaded from the installation disk or CD. To this end, the driver is loaded onto the host system from an installation diskette or installation CD, which the manufacturer of the peripheral device includes with the delivery, in a separate installation process. Normally, this requires complex user inputs which require a user to have detailed knowledge of the peripheral devices and of the host system. Particularly in environments which change on a mobile basis, for example internet cafes, reinstallation using a diskette or CD is required in each case. Added to this is the problem that a user is not permitted to install software for such publicly accessible systems.
An object of the invention is therefore to propose a solution which permits flexible and uncomplicated startup of USB-based peripheral devices on any host system.
This object is achieved by virtue of the driver being stored in the USB-based peripheral device, with startup of the peripheral device on the host system prompting automatic installation of the driver on the host system. The object is also achieved by a method for starting up the USB-based peripheral device in which the peripheral device outputs a descriptor for a device class defining mass storage, the host system integrates the peripheral device as a drive for system access operations, automatically installs a driver stored on the peripheral device in a memory which is associated with the host system, and enters the driver into the registry file in the host system.
By this means, the invention provides a peripheral device which permits simple and very flexible startup of the peripheral device without a user having any system-specific knowledge. The fact that the peripheral device whose device class is not known to the operating system pretends to be a device which is associated with the mass-storage device class allows the peripheral device to be integrated in the device manager of the host system at any time on the basis of the driver which is known to the operating system of the host system, which means that installing the driver required for operating the peripheral device requires no action by the user.
One particular advantage is that the manufacturer does not need to include any installation diskettes or CDs for driver installation with the delivery. This saves process costs, which arise for creating the diskettes or CDs, for storage and for packaging, and material costs.
Advantageously, the peripheral device signs off from the USB again following driver installation, which means that the peripheral device is also erased from the device manager. When the device signs onto the USB again, the operating system is able to take an entry in the registry (which was made following installation) as a basis for assigning the correct driver to the peripheral device, so that the peripheral device is loaded and the application can be started on the peripheral device.
The invention is explained in more detail below with reference to the figures shown in the drawings, in which:
The inventive peripheral device makes it possible to start up a peripheral device very flexibly and easily on any desired computer system, without making any specific or general user inputs which can be executed only on the basis of special knowledge of the computer system or of the peripheral device. This applies particularly when using publicly accessible computer systems, for which installation of software is normally not permitted.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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103 36 877.9 | Aug 2003 | DE | national |