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Technical Q&As: Hardware
Fibre Channel is a data-transfer architecture well suited for Storage Area Networks (SANs) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) solutions. Fibre Channel uses a serial architecture to connect mass-storage devices to servers and other computers. Fibre Channel makes use of optical cabling and can attain data-transfer speeds up to 2 Gbit/s. Fibre Channel interfaces are available for Xserve hardware, and Fibre Channel is the primary interface for Xserve RAID hardware. Developers can use Mac OS X APIs to create drivers for Fibre Channel hardware and to access files in a SAN.

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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
SCSIAction and IOSCSIUserClient on Mac OS X 10.2 (HTML) ()
QA1201: Describes migrating to a new API for SCSI Parallel devices starting with Mac OS X 10.2.
2002-09-13
Sending SCSI commands to storage devices (HTML) ()
QA1179: Explains that Mac OS X does not implement SCSI pass-through for many mass storage devices.
2002-08-06
IODeviceTree & the IORegistry (HTML) ()
QA1120: Describes the IODeviceTree plane in the Mac OS X IORegistry.
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
Sample code for allocating an amount of dictionary space (HTML)
HW71: Discusses the allocation and the setting of memory for Dictionary space in Open Firmware.
1999-10-11
What is the "dump" word and how do I use it? (HTML)
HW68: Describes the function of the Open Firmware word "dump" and how it can be used.
1999-10-11
What numeric base is the default for the Open Firmware user interface? (HTML)
HW65: Describes how the default numeric base used by the Open Firmware user interface is hexadecimal.
1999-10-11
Determining Open Firmware configuration variables (HTML) ()
HW56: Discusses how to determine the Open Firmware variables on a system.
1999-03-29
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
Why did the name of the PCI bridge change? (HTML) ()
HW59: Explains the name change of the PCI bridge to the generic name "pci" in Open Firmware.
1999-03-29
Are interrupts enabled while Open Firmware is running? (HTML) ()
HW44: Explains that interrupts are disabled when Open Firmware is running.
1999-02-15
What are configuration variables in Open Firmware? (HTML) ()
HW38: Defines the configuration variables in Open Firmware.
1999-02-15
PCI Type 1 Cycles (HTML)
HW26: Describes the circumstances when the PowerMac generates a Configuration Type 1 command.
1995-07-15