Vireo Software Inc has put together a tool to automate the creation of NT device drivers, claiming to have come up with a kit that’s far easier to use than Microsoft Corp’s own Windows NT Device Driver Kit. Vireo’s Driver::Works uses a wizard and C++ class library to build kernel mode device drivers, including drivers that support Microsoft’s new WDM Windows Driver Model, the unified driver model that’s supposed to work with both NT and Windows 97. Vireo says that Microsoft’s device driver kit has yet to support WDM drivers, which so far have all been hand-crafted in C. The Acton, Massachusetts company’s automated wizard software can generate a driver with 1,500 commented source lines. Vireo adds that its library reduces the amount of source code needed by half, compared to Microsoft’s driver kit. Driver::Works is $800, with no royalties or run-time fees for drivers built with the kit.
