Installing a Stream Handler

When a stream handler is installed by MINSTALL, the following events occur:

• A media driver issues an SpiGetHandler function.
  
• When the handler is loaded, the Sync/Stream Manager (SSM) reads in the respective stream protocol control blocks (SPCBs) from the SPI.INI file.
  
• If the stream handler is a DLL, the SSM loads and registers the DLL with the DOSLoadModule function. However, if the stream handler is a device driver, the SSM does not issue a DOSLoadModule because a CONFIG.SYS statement installs the device drivers during system startup.

Before the SSM can read in the respective SPCBs, the SPCBs first must be installed in the SPI.INI file, which is built during the multimedia installation of the base OS/2 product. This file contains all the information about stream handlers and stream classes that are currently supported by OS/2 multimedia.