77.1.1 The Architecture of MCI

To provide extensibility, MCI is designed around an architecture using special MCI device drivers to interpret and execute MCI commands. The following illustration shows the relationship between MCI and MCI device drivers:

This illustration is not available for this release

MCI device drivers can control media hardware directly or through the low-level multimedia API provided by Windows. Most commonly used devices, such as waveform audio and MIDI devices, are controlled through the low-level multimedia API. Devices not supported by the low-level API are controlled directly, usually through a serial port.

It's not necessary that you understand how MCI device drivers operate to use MCI. If you want to write your own MCI device driver or just want additional information about MCI drivers, see the Microsoft Windows Device Driver Kit.

Note:

CD-ROM and audio CD devices are controlled through commands sent to MSCD-EX, the CD extensions for MS-DOS. The MCI Pioneer Videodisk device driver is available from the Windows Driver Library (WDL).