How does an OS communicate with other hardware components?

Posted by Jack on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Jack
Published on 2010-03-11T21:47:47Z Indexed on 2010/03/19 18:31 UTC
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Filed under:

communication

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Hardware

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operating-systems

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interrupts

How can a program running on a CPU (mostly OS) access other PC hardware? Such as Graphic card, HDD and so?

From what I read, in DOS, this was done using BIOS calls, specifically the INT instruction. But, the INT instruction should only jump to the certain space in RAM. So how can some program stored in RAM access other computer hardware, when the CPU can only access RAM, and receive interrupts?

Does Windows use INT instructions as well, or is there a new way to communicate with the hardware?

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