AN232C-04WindowsCombinedDriverModel-Future.PDFVIP

Future Technology Devices International Ltd. AN232R-04 Windows Combined Driver Model Copyright ? 2006 Future Technology Devices International Ltd. 2 AN232C-04 Windows Combined Driver Model 1 Introduction This document describes the Combined Driver Model (CDM) for the implementation of FTDI drivers on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows XP x64, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 x64 operating systems. Copyright ? 2006 Future Technology Devices International Ltd. Background 3 2 Background FTDI has evolved two types of driver for its ICs: VCP and D2XX. The VCP driver makes the device appear in the system as a serial port. Applications access the port using the Win32 COMM API as if it was a normal serial port. The driver consists of two layers: FTDIBUS and FTSER2K. FTDIBUS handles the creation of the serial port and access to the hardware and FTSER2K is the implementation of the serial port. These drivers communicate using the FTDIBUS class interface. The D2XX driver is used in situations where a serial port is not required. It allows access to the device via the proprietary D2XX API. The driver is implemented as a single layer, FTD2XX.SYS, and is normally accessed through the library FTD2XX.DLL. Copyright ? 2006 Future Technology Devices International Ltd. 4 AN232C-04 Windows Combined Driver Model Copyright ? 2006 Future Technology Devices International Ltd. Architecture 5 3 Architecture The key component of CDM is a new driver that supports D2XX and FTDIBUS class interfaces. The combined driver