DEVICE

The description below is from the book
DOS the Easy Way by Everett Murdock Ph.D.

CLICK HERE for information about downloading the book.
Type: Internal (2.0 and later)

Syntax:

DEVICE=[d:][\path]\filename [parameters]

Purpose: Used in the CONFIG.SYS file to load device drivers into conventional memory.

Discussion

This command allows you to use devices with your computer system that are not normally supported by DOS. Many installation programs will insert a device driver into your CONFIG.SYS file automatically. If you want to maintain a copy of your original CONFIG.SYS file, you should make a backup of it before running an installation program of this type. DOS executes device drivers in the order in which they appear in the CONFIG.SYS file. For some device drivers the order of execution is important.

For more information about the DEVICE command, see Chapter 6, Tips for Advanced Users, in the downloadable book DOS the Easy Way.

The following is a list of the device drivers provided with MS-DOS:

ANSI.SYS
EGA.SYS
PRINTER.SYS
CHKSTATE.SYS
EMM386.EXE
RAMDRIVE.SYS
DBLSPACE.SYS
HIMEM.SYS
SETVER.EXE
DISPLAY.SYS
INTERLINK.EXE
SMARTDRV.EXE
DRIVER.SYS
POWER.EXE
SMARTDRV.SYS

NOTE

SMARTDRV.EXE has replaced SMARTDRV.SYS in DOS Version 6.0.

Options

parameters Used to specify any parameters required by the device driver. They are passed by DOS to the driver when it is loaded into memory.

Example

To use the file ANSI.SYS as the standard device driver, enter the following line in your CONFIG.SYS file:

device=c:\dos\ansi.sys

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