Where to start learning to program drivers

I'm an applications developer and have been for 15 or so years. I'm finding
it necessary in my job to work on drivers, including writing a brand new one
from scratch. The only experience I have writing drivers is for the old
MacOS where I could do whatever I wanted with no real kernel to speak of.
With Windows it seems to be a very different story.

Where should I begin when learning how to develop drivers for Windows. 9x
and 2k/XP? ( I really don't care about NT 3/4 right now ). Are there any
books that start from the basics and go from there? I don't need a "for
dummies" book but I do need something that starts from the beginning and
ends with most of what I need to know to write a fully functional driver.


Thanks,
Janik

Don
Tue Jul 29 16:25:01 CDT 2003

Get Walter Oney's "Programming the Windows Driver Model". Seriously
consider taking a course, OSR (www.osr.com), Azuis (http://www.azius.com/),
Walter Oney (www.oneysoft.com) and HOTT (http://www.traininghott.com/) all
offer good ones.

Don Burn (MVP, Windows DDK)
Windows 2k/XP/2k3 Filesystem and Driver Consulting

"Janik Colby" <janikc@wongo.com> wrote in message
news:#8yFBbhVDHA.2164@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> I'm an applications developer and have been for 15 or so years. I'm
finding
> it necessary in my job to work on drivers, including writing a brand new
one
> from scratch. The only experience I have writing drivers is for the old
> MacOS where I could do whatever I wanted with no real kernel to speak of.
> With Windows it seems to be a very different story.
>
> Where should I begin when learning how to develop drivers for Windows. 9x
> and 2k/XP? ( I really don't care about NT 3/4 right now ). Are there any
> books that start from the basics and go from there? I don't need a "for
> dummies" book but I do need something that starts from the beginning and
> ends with most of what I need to know to write a fully functional driver.
>
>
> Thanks,
> Janik
>
>
>

Bimo
Wed Jul 30 06:47:26 CDT 2003

Do NOT start from scratch, check out DriverStudio.

It will do most of the work for you, and you will have a driver up and
running in less than a week.
Comes with tons of good OOP examples, working templates ( unlike the MS
examples ) etc etc

It is stable, well documented, crash free, and from there you can start
digging into how things actually work.

LB

"Janik Colby" <janikc@wongo.com> wrote in message
news:%238yFBbhVDHA.2164@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> I'm an applications developer and have been for 15 or so years. I'm
finding
> it necessary in my job to work on drivers, including writing a brand new
one
> from scratch. The only experience I have writing drivers is for the old
> MacOS where I could do whatever I wanted with no real kernel to speak of.
> With Windows it seems to be a very different story.
>
> Where should I begin when learning how to develop drivers for Windows. 9x
> and 2k/XP? ( I really don't care about NT 3/4 right now ). Are there any
> books that start from the basics and go from there? I don't need a "for
> dummies" book but I do need something that starts from the beginning and
> ends with most of what I need to know to write a fully functional driver.
>
>
> Thanks,
> Janik
>
>
>

James
Wed Jul 30 09:04:33 CDT 2003

The temptation to respond to the oft-asked question, How do I do it?, is
irresistable.

Unfortunately, I don't know any books that cover a lot of the basic concepts
like multiprocessing and asynchronous operations.

That said, my recommended books at Solomon and Russinovich, "Inside Windows
2000"; Oney, "Programming WDM," 2d edition; and Viscarola and Mason, "Windows NT
Device Driver." The first for OS structure and many basics; the second for the
basics, many concepts and many details of the prevalent driver model; the third
for the legacy driver model and some concepts. Don't plan on understanding all
of each one without many readings.

In terms of courses, OSR offers very good courses. I had an excellent experience
with their advanced driver course a few years back. I am sure the Oney and Azius
courses are good, too.

Get the DDK! It costs only shipping and has tons of examples. Many of these are
the starting point for commercial drivers and are part of the OS itself.
Further, you need the DDK to create drivers written from scratch or based on the
examples.

Janik Colby wrote:

> Where should I begin when learning how to develop drivers for Windows. 9x
> and 2k/XP? ( I really don't care about NT 3/4 right now ).

--
If replying by e-mail, please remove "nospam." from the address.

James Antognini
Windows DDK MVP

stewo68
Wed Jul 30 10:45:15 CDT 2003

http://students.cs.byu.edu/~nbushman/drivers.htm

Excerpt:

"People keep on asking me, "Hey, how can I learn how to write
drivers?" Well, I wrote up this document to help answer that question
(at least partially). The first part of this document lists various
driver dev resources, and the second part contains a bunch of tips and
tricks."

Stephan
---
On Tue, 29 Jul 2003 14:18:05 -0700, "Janik Colby" <janikc@wongo.com>
wrote:

>I'm an applications developer and have been for 15 or so years. I'm finding
>it necessary in my job to work on drivers, including writing a brand new one
>from scratch. The only experience I have writing drivers is for the old
>MacOS where I could do whatever I wanted with no real kernel to speak of.
>With Windows it seems to be a very different story.
>
>Where should I begin when learning how to develop drivers for Windows. 9x
>and 2k/XP? ( I really don't care about NT 3/4 right now ). Are there any
>books that start from the basics and go from there? I don't need a "for
>dummies" book but I do need something that starts from the beginning and
>ends with most of what I need to know to write a fully functional driver.
>
>
>Thanks,
>Janik