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Technical Q&As: Device Drivers
The I/O Kit, part of Darwin, is the device driver subsystem for Mac OS X. It supports rapid driver development, streamlining the development of audio hardware. Core Audio's Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) serves as the interface between an audio device driver and an audio application. The HAL supports native multichannel audio in a manner scalable for future high-resolution formats as they arise. Developers can use these programming interfaces to create audio devices that are compatible with Apple products.

View all Music & Audio Technical Q&As.
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Available FireWire Isochronous Bandwidth (HTML)
QA1356: Discusses attempting to "pre-flight" an isochronous bandwidth allocation request by reading the currently available bandwidth.
2004-07-07
Generating an NMI Without a Programmer's Switch (HTML) ()
QA1264: Explains how to generate a non-maskable interrupt (NMI) on CPUs without programmer's switches.
2004-04-26
Installing an I/O Kit KEXT Without Rebooting (HTML)
QA1319: Describes the state of the art of installing I/O Kit kernel extensions (KEXTs) without requiring a restart.
2003-10-28
Mapping kernel memory to user space on Mac OS X 10.2 (HTML) ()
QA1197: Describes a change to mapping kernel memory to user space affecting Mac OS X 10.2 and later.
2002-09-13
Retain Counts of io_object_t Objects in IOKit.framework (HTML) ()
QA1195: Distinguishes between the retain counts of an I/O Kit kernel object and its io_object_t user space proxy.
2002-09-04
IODeviceTree & the IORegistry (HTML) ()
QA1120: Describes the IODeviceTree plane in the Mac OS X IORegistry.
2002-02-13
Power Management; Policy Maker vs. Power Controller (HTML) ()
QA1121: Describes the differences between a Power Management Policy Maker and a Power Management Power Controller.
2002-02-13
IOKit Framework Headers (HTML) ()
QA1107: Describes the differences between the headers in IOKit.framework and the I/O Kit headers in Kernel.framework.
2002-01-15
The "packages" node in the device tree (HTML)
HW90: Describes the "packages" node in the Open Firmware device tree.
2000-09-05
Is the Open Firmware device tree object oriented? (HTML)
HW80: Discusses the object-oriented attributes of the Open Firmware device tree.
1999-11-15
Are the Name Registry device tree nodes unique? (HTML)
Deprecated - HW64: Discusses whether Name Registry nodes copied from the Open Firmware device tree are unique.
1999-10-11
Expansion ROM device properties (HTML) ()
HW50: Describes the Open Firmware properties that should be included in a boot device's expansion ROM.
1999-03-29
Getting started with Forth (HTML) ()
HW53: Describes where FCode driver developers can get information about the Forth programming language.
1999-03-29