Device Drivers Books

Essential Linux Device Drivers (Prentice Hall Open Source Software Development Series)

Sreekrishnan Venkateswaran

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Operating Systems -> Linux -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

“Probably the most wide ranging and complete Linux device driver book I’ve read.”

--Alan Cox, Linux Guru and Key Kernel Developer

“Very comprehensive and detailed, covering almost every single Linux device driver type.”

--Theodore Ts’o, First Linux Kernel Developer in North America and Chief Platform Strategist of the Linux Foundation

The Most Practical Guide to Writing Linux Device Drivers

Linux now offers an exceptionally robust environment for driver development: with today’s kernels, what once required years of development time can be accomplished in days. In this practical, example-driven book, one of the world’s most experienced Linux driver developers systematically demonstrates how to develop reliable Linux drivers for virtually any device. Essential Linux Device Drivers is for any programmer with a working knowledge of operating systems and C, including programmers who have never written drivers before. Sreekrishnan Venkateswaran focuses on the essentials, bringing together all the concepts and techniques you need, while avoiding topics that only matter in highly specialized situations. Venkateswaran begins by reviewing the Linux 2.6 kernel capabilities that are most relevant to driver developers. He introduces simple device classes; then turns to serial buses such as I2C and SPI; external buses such as PCMCIA, PCI, and USB; video, audio, block, network, and wireless device drivers; user-space drivers; and drivers for embedded Linux–one of today’s fastest growing areas of Linux development. For each, Venkateswaran explains the technology, inspects relevant kernel source files, and walks through developing a complete example.

• Addresses drivers discussed in no other book, including drivers for I2C, video, sound, PCMCIA, and different types of flash memory

• Demystifies essential kernel services and facilities, including kernel threads and helper interfaces

• Teaches polling, asynchronous notification, and I/O control

• Introduces the Inter-Integrated Circuit Protocol for embedded Linux drivers

• Covers multimedia device drivers using the Linux-Video subsystem and Linux-Audio framework

• Shows how Linux implements support for wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, Infrared, WiFi, and cellular networking

• Describes the entire driver development lifecycle, through debugging and maintenance

• Includes reference appendixes covering Linux assembly, BIOS calls, and Seq files

Linux Device Drivers, 3rd Edition

Jonathan Corbet, Alessandro Rubini, Greg Kroah-Hartman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 45 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Updated to cover version 2.4.x of the Linux kernel, the second edition of Linux Device Drivers remains the best general-purpose, paper-bound guide for programmers wishing to make hardware devices work under the world's most popular open-source operating system. The authors take care to show how to write drivers that are portable--that is, that compile and run under all popular Linux platforms. That, along with the fact that they're careful to explain and illustrate concepts, makes this book very well suited to any programmer familiar with C but not with the hardware-software interface. It's worth noting that the emphasis in the title is on "device drivers" as much as "Linux." This book will make sense to you if you've never written a driver for any platform before. It helps if you have some Linux or Unix background, but even that is secondary as a prerequisite to C skill.

For a programming text--and one concerned with low-level instructions and data structures, at that--this book is remarkably rich in prose. You'll typically want to read this book straight through, more or less skipping the code samples, before sketching out your plan for the driver you need to write. Then, go back and pay closer attention to the sections on specific details you need to implement, like custom task queues. For coding-time details about specific system calls and programming techniques, count on the index to point you to the right passages. --David Wall

Topics covered: Techniques for writing hardware device drivers that run under Linux kernels 2.0.x through 2.2.x. Sections show how to manage memory, time, interrupts, ports, and other details of the hardware-software interface.

Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness (Series of Books in the Mathematical Sciences)

M. R. Garey, D. S. Johnson

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Algorithms -> General
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Algorithms -> General AAS

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Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This book's introduction features a humorous story of a man with a line of people behind him, who explains to his boss, "I can't find an efficient algorithm, but neither can all these famous people." This man illustrates an important quality of a class of problems, namely, the NP-complete problems: if you can prove that a problem is in this class, then it has no known polynomial-time solution that is guaranteed to work in general. This quality implies that the problem is difficult to deal with in practice.

The focus of this book is to teach the reader how to identify, deal with, and understand the essence of NP-complete problems; Computers and Intractability does all of those things effectively. In a readable yet mathematically rigorous manner, the book covers topics such as how to prove that a given problem is NP-complete and how to cope with NP-complete problems. (There is even a chapter on advanced topics, with numerous references.) Computers and Intractability also contains a list of more than 300 problems--most of which are known to be NP-complete--with comments and references.

The Windows 2000 Device Driver Book: A Guide for Programmers (2nd Edition) (Microsoft Technologies Series)

Art Baker, Jerry Lozano

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Windows 2000 Device Driver Book can lead any experienced Windows programmer through every step of device driver development: planning, implementation, testing, debugging, installation, and distribution. Thoroughly updated to reflect Microsoft's Windows Driver Model (WDM) for Windows 2000 and 98, it covers everything from architecture to tools, and includes a powerhouse library of exclusive tools and C and C++ code for streamlining device driver projects. Starting with a high-level overview of WDM components, the book quickly moves into the details of the development environment and driver installation. Master the I/O Manager, its data structures, and its interaction with drivers. Understand Plug and Play and Power Management through extensive practical examples; learn how to construct safe reentrant driver code; log errors and events using Windows Management Instrumentation; utilize kernel-mode threads; layered drivers; and more. The accompanying CD-ROM includes sample drivers, C++ classes to jumpstart your projects, driver installation utilities, even an exclusive device driver AppWizard!

Writing MS-Dos Device Drivers

Robert S. Lai, Waite Group. The

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Best... And Last Book on This Topic 5 out of 5 stars.
19 of 20 people found this review helpful.

If you are even reading this review, it is probably because you, for one reason or another, need to write an MS-DOS device driver. I was in the same boat, and this book saved me.

I could not have done it without it. So little material remains about DOS device drivers.

This book provides detailed information on writting both character and block device drivers. Many examples are provided as this book guides you toward the development of more complex drivers.

Most of this book assumes that your are knowledgable in Assembly Language programming. However, the most useful section for me was a framework for developing device drivers in C.

It is for beginers 1 out of 5 stars.
5 of 16 people found this review helpful.

This book just for beginers. Also, there is lot of assembly example instead of C language.

Should be the first device driver book you read... 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is an excellent book. Approaching device drivers via DOS is probably the best method to understanding device drivers in general. As to previous comments that the examples were written in assembly rather than C, this is a strength, not a weakness. Many drivers during the heyday of DOS were written in assembly. And while assembly is. admittedly, a difficult language in which to program, it does force you to stick your head into the hardware and keep it there (which is what device drivers are all about).
The only negative comment is that the book cannot be viewed on the Amazon website, particularly the table of contents and an excerpt.

Editorial Review:

This superb introduction to device drivers describes what device drivers do, how they interface with DOS, and provides examples and techniques for building a collection of device drivers that can be customized for individual use.

Practical Linux Programming: Device Drivers, Embedded systems, and the Internet (with CD- ROM) (Programming Series)

Ashfaq A. Khan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 2.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Linux is becoming the OS of choice for embedded system designers and engineers, due to its real-time power and flexibility. Written for engineers and students, Practical Linux Programming: Device Drivers, Embedded Systems, and the Internet is about designing and developing embedded systems, using Internet technology as a user interface. The book emphasizes the use of three different technologies for embedded system design and development: the Web, the Linux kernel, and SQL queries. From a software design point of view, device driver design, interprocess communication usage, Perl programming, shell programming, HTML tags, and SQL queries are covered in detail. The examples demonstrate the guidelines for designing an embedded system that requires interaction of different software modules and show how an operating system like Linux helps glue your software modules together. The book is presented as a tutorial for students and engineers who wish to learn the process of designing an embedded system application using Linux as the real-time operating system and the Internet as the user interface.

Writing OS - 2 2.1 Device Drivers in Ck (VNR Computer Library)

Steven J. Mastrianni

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Has some value, but could be a lot better 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This book is the only one of its kind, and if it had competition, it probably wouldn't do as well as it has. It does explain some of the basic topics of OS/2 driver programming, but more than half of the book is a straight copy from the DDK, which is available for a free download. It covers a wide range of driver types, but not in great depth. The biggest drawback is that it does not use the standard DevHelp library, so it doesn't conform to the DDK documentation....I recommend that if you use this book, you should cross-reference it with more modern discussions that can be found for free online. The good news is that even though it's several years old, all the information still applies, as there have been very few changes to the OS/2 driver model.

Editorial Review:

You'll get your first OS/2 device drivers and running in less than one hour with this easy-to-understand guidebook. Newly revised and expanded, this updated edition defines each type of driver, explains how various components of the operating system interact and shows you how to fit drivers into your system. You'll get numerous tips on debugging, tuning and enhancing driver performance as well as detailed discussions of application interfaces, mouse drivers, storage devices, Micro Channel devices and other tools. Includes a disk of source code and code for four complete drivers.

Writing UNIX Device Drivers

George Pajari

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Operating Systems -> Unix -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

One of the best book for learning UNIX drivers. 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 7 people found this review helpful.

This book is a priceless collection in the shelf of a Device Driver writer. Whether you are writing device drivers or just want to know more about them this is the book to read. The easy-to-understand language and style adopted by the author is also an added benefit to the reader.

Editorial Review:

"Writing UNIX Device Drivers" provides application programmers with definitive information on writing device drivers for the UNIX operating system. It explains, through working examples, the issues related to the design and implementation of these important components of application programs.

Written by an acknowledged expert, the book uses full source code listings of real devices to explain the underlying concepts. Complete source code is provided for 12 drivers, including:

block drivers for a SCSI disk and a line printer

a character driver for an intelligent serial I/O device

a streams driver for a token-ring card

Covering System V Releases 3 and 4, "Writing UNIX Device Drivers" provides essential practical advice for all UNIX applications programmers.

Writing Device Drivers, Tutorial and Reference

Tim Burke, Mark A. Parenti, Al Wojtas

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> APIs & Operating Environments -> Device Drivers

Editorial Review:

For users of the DEC OSF/1 operating system as well as for systems engineers interested in writing UNIX-based drivers, this book discusses how to write device drivers for computer systems running the DEC OSF/1 operating systems. A disk is also supplied. By following the task-oriented approach, the reader should acquire the skills necessry to write OSF-based device drivers. Mastery of the concepts and examples presented in this book provides a fundamental background for writing a variety of device drivers, including disk and tape controllers, and more specialized drivers, such as array processors. The book also features information on OSF-based kernal interfaces, and source code listings for the driver examples are supplied on the disk. a glossary of device driver-related terms is also included.

Writing Windows WDM Device Drivers

Chris Cant

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Aimed at the more experienced Windows C/C++ programmer, Writing Windows WDM Device Drivers provides an up-to-the-minute guide to writing drivers that conform to the new Windows 2000 driver standard. This well-paced and informative guide offers numerous excellent tips, including how to design device drivers that fit your needs, and a good deal of material on how to test and debug driver code.

Two standout sections help make this title successful. First the author describes the WDM model in detail and explains that it isn't always necessary to write your own custom device driver. (Author Chris Cant discusses when to consider off-the-shelf drivers or when to script standard drivers from Microsoft, instead of writing your own. If you do decide to go for a custom driver, Cant's simple generic drivers will help get you started.)

The second strength of this book is its discussion of a variety of techniques for testing and debugging device drivers (traditionally, a tough nut to crack since device drivers work so close to hardware). The book provides a debug driver (which allows you to log messages from other drivers), plus a number of useful tips on installing, testing, and debugging drivers, including logging events with Windows.

Fast-paced and informative, this book is a thorough guide to virtually every aspect of today's WDM device drivers, including APIs like Plug and Play, ACPI for power management, and working with USB devices. Programming device drivers is still tough, but Writing Windows WDM Device Drivers delivers all that you need to design, code, and test custom device drivers successfully. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered: Windows Driver Model (WDM) basics, device driver components, off-the-shelf drivers, standard drivers, designing device drivers, kernel calls, I/O Request Packet (IRP) processing, WDM driver development tools and utilities, testing and debugging techniques, installation, dispatch routines, plug-and-play support, power management and Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI), Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), event logging, sample generic drivers, interrupt handling, Windows NT hardware, system drivers, USB and USB Driver Interface (USBDI), and the Human Input Device (HID) model.