On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 23:46:43 UTC, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Bob Eager wrote:
On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:24:15 UTC, (Andrew
Gabriel) wrote:

Hardly a BIOS. Hardly Basic. Most (nearly all) BIOSes don't even drive
the device in either interrupt or DMA mode. I think the use of the term
BIOS is very misleading. Proper device drivers do, of course (I've
written enough of them!).
Wouldn't have been my choice of words either, but the BIOS was
actually written originally to provide the low level interface
to the hardware.

Yes...circa 1977 as I recall....!

MMM. Think the term may go back a bit earlier than that..that sounds
like the CP/M bios there..

CP/M was the first system to use the term, and that was around 1977
AFAIR.

But the point is...it was a *Basic* Input/Output System. Kernel drivers
in modern systems are hardly basic!
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