Patent ID: 8649028

Claim:
An image forming apparatus having a connection terminal for connecting and disconnecting plural plug-in devices, which are configured to be plugged into the connection terminal, the image forming apparatus comprising: an imaging hardware part that reads an image of an original document to be read; a printing hardware part that prints the image on a print paper; a driver controller that activates a device driver corresponding to a plug-in device of the plural plug-in devices in accordance with a detection of an insertion of said plug-in device; and a management part that manages information of device drivers corresponding to different plug-in devices and applications using the plural plug-in devices, wherein an application using the inserted plug-in device requests information of the device driver activated by the driver controller from the management part and the device driver establishes a connection with the application in response to a connection request from the application, and said device driver registers identification information, which is for a communication with the device driver, in a predetermined area of a memory device of said image forming apparatus, and said application acquires the identification information from said predetermined area and makes a connection request to said device driver using the identification information.