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Date:	Fri, 28 Dec 2001 19:47:00 PST7
From:	Peter Skye <pskye@peterskye.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: Device driver: was Linksys Wireless Access Point

Content Type: text/plain

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Sheridan George wrote:
>
> Maybe we should entertain a change from
> the programming SIG to a device driver SIG.
>
> Learning how to create device drivers
> is probably not that big a problem.
>
> Is this doable or am I an academic living in an ivory tower?

Device drivers aren't complicated, but when I was playing with writing
them a few years ago it seemed that people were arguing about the
semantics of "device driver" rather than working on writing them.

It helps to have two machines hooked together through the COM ports.
You write the driver on one machine and execute it on the other. Then
when it blows up and you have to reboot, you can keep working on the
development machine rather than waiting for the boot to complete. And
the COM connection can tie into a "debug" version of the kernel so you
can trace what's going on if you want to.

Drivers are just little programs. There's no magic involved.

> Getting device manufactures to make detailed functional
> information available will be the big hurdle.
>
> If we can get the info. we can solve at least
> some driver problems for ourselves. Or maybe
> we can learn how to port Linux drivers.

My favorite tool is a disassembler. I would disassemble the DOS driver
and see what the necessary actions were.

Linux drivers should be just as easy. I'm sure there are Linux
disassemblers. (From what I've read, a lot of the Linux drivers are
_not_ "open source".)

You can't readily "port" a Linux driver because the driver model is
different, but you can swipe all the important code algorithms.

Somewhere around here I have my books on writing device drivers for OS/2
and for Linux.

- Peter

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