I can't say I've investigated this at all, maybe it's already moving this way; all hardware should have it's own available parameters stored on-board, available to be read back by software, for example on startup. Things like available, valid, ranges in volts, current, frequency, channels etc...
It would always be a good idea to read those parameters from hardware by software, instead of relying on model number, manuals, drivers. Then, software could easily adapt to different models of the same main type. Plug in a new hardware and it would announce what it's main capabilities are.
My2c
