Telescope driver files provide the translation of elevation and azimuth commands from the Control Point program to a form that can be handled by the hardware or hardware control mechanism. It follows that almost every type of hardware requires its own driver. Radiotelescope antenna systems are often one-of-a-kind productions. There are a few commercial antenna rotator systems and some generalized interfaces that allow simple connection of a computer to the motors that move the antenna. The new PstRotator (see below) driver opens a route to control many of the well-known commercial antenna rotators.
The Driver File's name is an essential part of any telescope definition file. When the Control Point program loads a telescope definition file it uses the driver name to load the driver file from the \Telescope Drivers\ directory. Driver files for Radio Eyes are technically ActiveX EXE files. When drivers are executed there is usually not a visible window displayed though there can be in some cases. When the Control Point program connects to the driver, it will usually send initialization instructions. These are in the form of a string that is specified in the telescope definition file after the parameter DEVICEINI.
For the most part you will not have to worry about these and other technical details of the driver files. You will just need to know which one is used with your particular hardware. If anyone is interested in writing a driver and has programming experience with ActiveX EXEs, please contact me and I can share details of the technical interface to the driver. I can also create custom drivers but this may entail some cost.
Read about the ASCOM driver interface here.
Read about the Generalized Serial Interface Driver here.
Read about the PstRotator driver. This driver runs the PstRotator program which in turn supports a large number of commercial rotators.