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Chapter 3: Device Control Software

IRIX provides for two general methods of controlling devices, at the user level and at the kernel level. This chapter describes the architecture of these two software levels and points out the different abilities of each. This is important background material for understanding all types of device control. The chapter covers the following main topics:

"User-Level Device Control" summarizes five methods of device control for user-initiated processes.
"Kernel-Level Device Control" sets the concepts needed to understand kernel-level drivers.

User-Level Device Control
Kernel-Level Device Control

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