October 2004
Intermediate to advanced
304 pages
7h 44m
English
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Hack #12. Manage Devices
Take control of device configuration.
One of the basic functions of the PC's BIOS is to identify and provide access to a variety of core components and I/O devices, whether they are embedded on the system board or plugged into an I/O card slot. Core components include the CPU, memory, internal system clocks and timers, and the I/O bus itself. Simple I/O devices supported by every BIOS include the keyboard, mouse, video adapter, I/O ports (serial, parallel, USB, and/or FireWire), and disk drive adapters. All of these devices have very predictable but limited places to be, including:
Preset and expected hardware addresses (to access and get data to or from the device)
Interrupt Request (IRQ) signals so devices can tell the CPU and programs they need attention
Direct Memory Access (DMA) request and acknowledgment signals for devices and the CPU to communicate with each other, allowing high-speed data transfers directly to and from device memory
The earlier, or legacy, BIOS dealt with the hardware as provided, and the hardware configurations were preset or manually altered using switches and jumpers. When all you had were simple I/O devices, configuring a PC was manageable but admittedly not easy for those not inclined to get inside a PC and work with wires and jumpers. As PCs got more popular, more and more nontechnical users were exposed to them, and configuring a PC started to become a major frustration and technical support nightmare for PC vendors. As technology ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.