Developing Windows NT Device Drivers: A Programmer's Handbook

By Frederick W. Baller and Frederick William Baller

Developing Windows NT Device Drivers is an authoritative and clearly written resource on how to write device drivers for Windows NT. The book begins with an excellent high-level overview of how Windows NT device drivers work and how to create them. The text concentrates on "generic" device drivers written in C and excludes specialized drivers for graphics, file system, and network hardware. Eventually, the book turns to device registers, device memory, and different PC busses (such as PCI). A section on I/O Request Packets (IRPs) and interrupt handling within Windows NT shows how to do asynchronous I/O. The authors offer a simple "Hello World" example for a device driver and present various debugging techniques. Subsequent chapters deepen the reader's knowledge on topics such as device I/O, synchronization (including spin locks), device-driver initialization and cleanup, and direct memory access (DMA). These chapters also instruct you on how to access hardware ports and interrupt processing (a crucial topic) and how to move device memory into system memory (along with a working example). Discussion of more specialized topics--ISA and PCI busses, serialization, driver threads, and the advantages of the new "layered" driver model--follows. Authors Edward Dekker and Joseph M. Newcomer offer plenty of excellent real-world advice. (Material on how to log device-driver events and manage the infamous Windows "Blue Screen of Death" is indispensable.) They present a "hardware simulator" that lets readers develop device drivers without an actual hardware device. The book closes with information on Windows 2000, universal serial bus (USB) devices, the Win32 driver model, and over 300 pages of reference material, including device-driver kernel functions. Overall, this comprehensive text provides a solid introduction to the way Windows NT device drivers interact with hardware; it gives you all you need to start building custom device drivers. --Richard Dragan This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0201695901
• ISBN13: 9780201695908
• Release Date: April 1999
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Length: 1280 Pages
• Weight: 4.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.1" x 7.7" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Book is old, but still worth it

Lets face it, Microsoft could not sell a dieing man a glass of water. Reading the wdk docs is the most jumbled pile of words aimed at nice short web pages than getting ideas across. This book was written in the NT 4 era and looks on Win2k as the future, but Windows driver writing is complex enough and has not changed in its base ideas so that with this book, along with the wdk you can write a driver! Others have noted that...

My Savior

I'm a high school intern and I knew nothing about drivers (other than installing them) 3 months ago. Now I have completed 2, an ISA and Parallel port driver. This book is really great for people new to the DDK and need a good foundation. The examples are clear, and the pace of the book is pretty slow (but steady). Once you get past the first 9-10 chapters you can pretty much skim for parts you need. The tips are especially...

The very BEST of the BEST

This is the BEST book on windows NT driver. I own 6 or 7 books on Windows NT driver, but this is the only one that I carry around with me at all time. This book really helped me with my project at work, especially, the chapter on PCI and memory mapping. I am in love with this book. Can't leave home without it.

The BEST book on building windows drivers

It's totally great to hear the inside scoop from the experts. I love the real experience grey comments. A very tough subject covered in great depth but still very readable. A device driver classic! Forget the other driver books and buy this one!

This book is "The Bible" for NT device drivers

I love this book. Whatever grey areas were created by other books is cleared after reading this book. The verbosity kept me interested.