Why no MicroScribe has ever needed a driver install, and how a design decision from 2000 keeps twenty-year-old arms working with this year’s software.
Will a MicroScribe from 2005 work with a brand-new computer?
I see versions of that question all over the CAD forums, and the answer surprises people every time. Plug it in. That is the whole procedure.
No driver install, no setup wizard. In fact there has never been a driver, not for the earliest serial arms and not for USB. Software that is MicroScribe aware talks to the arm through a communications module that ships with it or compiles right into it, and that direct integration usually unlocks the deepest functionality. For everything else there is MUS, our MicroScribe Utility Software, which can type measurements into any program that accepts keyboard input. MUS makes the MicroScribe a universal data collection tool. Either way, nothing burrows into the operating system. That was a decision, not an accident.
From the beginning, the MicroScribe was conceived as a kind of 3D mouse. Its first home was the computer graphics world, where it was used to translate clay models into iconic animated characters. Someone on the original team even had the bright idea of routing measurements through the keyboard buffer: if a program accepted typed input, it could accept MicroScribe data. That idea has been with the product from day one, and MUS is its direct descendant.
When USB communication arrived with the G series in 2000, we held that line. A USB MicroScribe identifies itself as an HID device, the same class of hardware as your mouse and keyboard. Windows already knows how to talk to it. Nothing to install, nothing to break when the operating system moves on. The G series and the first i series arms even carried both serial and USB, so no one was stranded by the transition.
Developers got the same courtesy. The SDK settled on a single gateway, ArmDll, and as Windows evolved we carried it forward as ArmDll32 and then ArmDll64. Applications built on it kept right on working while the ground shifted underneath them.
The earliest 3D-series arms speak serial, and modern computers gave up their serial ports long ago. ArmDll bridges that gap as well: it detects how an arm is connected and sets up the right communication path, serial or USB, without the user lifting a finger. Getting an early arm running on a modern machine deserves an article of its own. Soon.
People ask why a twenty-year-old MicroScribe still works with this year’s software. This is the answer. Longevity is not just our service policy. It is engineered in.
About Revware
Revware provides high, quality, simple to use, innovative, cost-effective modeling solutions to solve your design, metrology, and engineering problems.