Developing Windows NT Device Drivers

Developing Windows NT Device Drivers: A Programmer's Handbook offers programmers a comprehensive and in-depth guide to building device drivers for Windows NT. Written by two experienced driver developers, Edward N. Dekker and Joseph M. Newcomer, this book provides detailed coverage of techniques, tools, methods, and pitfalls to help make the often complex and byzantine "black art" of driver development straightforward and accessible. This book is designed for anyone involved in the development of Windows NT Device Drivers, particularly those working on drivers for nonstandard devices that Microsoft has not specifically supported. Because Windows NT does not permit an application program to directly manipulate hardware, a customized kernel mode device driver must be created for these nonstandard devices. And since experience has clearly shown that superficial knowledge can be hazardous when developing device drivers, the authors have taken care to explore each relevant topic in depth. This book's coverage focuses on drivers for polled, programmed I/O, interrupt-driven, and DMA devices.The authors discuss the components of a kernel mode device driver for Windows NT, including background on the two primary bus interfaces used in today's computers: the ISA and PCI buses.
Developers will learn the mechanics of compilation and linking, how the drivers register themselves with the system, experience-based techniques for debugging, and how to build robust, portable, multithread- and multiprocessor-safe device drivers that work as intended and won't crash the system. The authors also show how to call the Windows NT kernel for the many services required to support a device driver and demonstrate some specialized techniques, such as mapping device memory or kernel memory into user space. Thus developers will not only learn the specific mechanics of high-quality device driver development for Windows NT, but will gain a deeper understanding of the foundations of device driver design.