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Technical Q&As: Device Drivers
Serial devices communicate with a computer through a serial port, which transmits and receives data in a serial bit stream. In Mac OS X, developers can access serial-port devices through the I/O Kit (Apple's object-oriented driver development framework) in conjunction with the POSIX termios API. The I/O Kit also supports the development of serial controller drivers.

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Adding dependencies with kmodload (HTML)
QA1097: Illustrates how to specify dependencies when using kmodload.
2001-12-05
The dreaded "incompatible flag -framework" error (HTML)
QA1096: Explains how to eliminate the incompatible flag -framework error in Project Builder.
2001-12-05
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
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
Getting started with Forth (HTML) ()
HW53: Describes where FCode driver developers can get information about the Forth programming language.
1999-03-29
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
Installing smart card reader drivers (HTML)
QA1359: Updates obsolete information contained in the pcscd(8) man page on Mac OS X Jaguar and Panther.
2004-08-30
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
Is the Open Firmware device tree object oriented? (HTML)
HW80: Discusses the object-oriented attributes of the Open Firmware device tree.
1999-11-15
Issues with boot time KEXT loading (HTML) ()
QA1087: Explains how to solve problems with loading KEXTs at boot time.
2004-01-15
Making sense of IOKit error codes (HTML) ()
QA1075: Explains how to interpret I/O Kit error codes.
2002-02-07
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
The "packages" node in the device tree (HTML)
HW90: Describes the "packages" node in the Open Firmware device tree.
2000-09-05
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
Serial API Choice (HTML)
DV39: Discusses the choice of serial APIs supported by traditional Mac OS and Mac OS X.
2001-07-02