Chapter 1, "Introduction to Device Drivers," introduces basic concepts of devices and provides information on the system hardware/software.
Chapter 2, "Writing a Device Driver," describes the general interface for both user-level and kernel-level device drivers and introduces the various device driver models.
Chapter 3, "Writing a VME Device Driver," describes the VME-bus and explains how to write user-level and kernel-level VME device drivers.
Chapter 4, "Writing an EISA Device Driver," describes the EISA-bus interface and explains how to write user-level and kernel-level EISA device drivers.
Chapter 5, "Writing a SCSI Device Driver," describes the SCSI-bus interface and explains how to write user-level and kernel-level SCSI device drivers.
Chapter 6, "Writing Kernel-level GIO Device Drivers," describes the GIO-bus interface and explains how to write kernel-level GIO device drivers.
Chapter 7, "Writing Kernel-level General Memory-mapping Device Drivers," explains how to write kernel-level general memory-mapping device drivers.
Chapter 8, "Writing Multiprocessor Device Drivers," addresses questions about device drivers that run on multiprocessor workstations.
Chapter 9, "Writing Network Device Drivers," addresses questions particular to device drivers that run on networked workstations.
Chapter 10, "Driver Installation and Testing," describes symmon, the kernel debugger, and explains how to use it.
Chapter 11, "Kernel-level Dynamically Loadable Modules (DLMs)," describes how kernel modules can be loaded dynamically.
Appendix A, "System-specific Issues," provides information on various CPUs and platforms. It addresses, among other topics, the differences in data cache invalidation, write buffer flushing, and VME addressing.
Appendix B, "SCSI Controller Error Messages," lists common error messages.
Appendix C, "Device Driver Migration Notes," gives the information required to make earlier IRIX device drivers compliant with releases 5.2, 5.3, and 6.0.
The Glossary contains definitions of some useful terms for device driver writers; the Index provides another set of entry points to the material in this manual.