April 4, 2003. Microsoft has announced online "Ask the Experts" sessions concerning the Windows Driver Framework, to be held at http://msdn.microsoft.com/chats on May 28 from 7-8 PM PDT and again on June 2 from 10-11 AM PDT.

So, what is this Windows Driver Framework, inquiring minds would like to know? We're not allowed to say anything more until after the commencement of the WinHEC conference on May 6 in New Orleans.  That should be a pretty broad hint that WinHEC will contain plenty of information about this new way of writing drivers for Windows systems, maybe in some of those sessions with "Longhorn Driver Kit" in the title. Come back to WD-3 on May 6 for breaking details. And, if you haven't signed up for the conference yet, visit http://www.microsoft.com/winhec and do it now!

May 9, 2003. WinHEC 2003 is now a fond memory. If you didn't go, or if you didn't manage to get one of the WD-3 bookmarks at the show, a limited number of these finely crafted heirlooms are still available. Simply send a SASE (that's Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope for those of you born after the Age of Snail Mail) to the Editor in Chief, whose address can be found at the web site listed in the Contact Us page. Remember: these bookmarks are lighter and less breakable than coffee mugs, and they won't deprive your hair of badly needed moisture when worn in the rain! Plus there may never be any more of them after this supply runs out.

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Driver programming has gotten to be wicked hard, even for experts. At WinHEC 2003, Microsoft has announced a new model for driver programming -- Windows Driver Framework. Although WDF is still under development, there's much to say about it. This article explains the basic concepts and shows a "Hello, World!" driver that contains calls to just three Device Driver Interface routines and yet actually installs, uninstalls, and withstands power transitions.

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One of the obstacles to getting devices to market for the high-speed 1394 bus is lack of tutorial documentation about the drivers you need to write. In this first part of a series of articles, Bill explains how a driver can allocate an address range -- one of those sticky bits that you need to get right at the beginning before you can make real progress with a driver.

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We could have called this article "Null-terminated strings considered harmful" because using null-terminated strings in the kernel can be hazardous. Functions like strcpy can clobber a buffer. Functions like strlen can walk off the end of valid memory looking for a null terminator. The venerable strncpy can leave you with a string that you thought would be null terminated but really isn't. In this article, Gary explores NTSTRSAFE.H, a collection of "safe" string functions recently added to the DDK. Read this article before a mistaken assumption about string data leaves you with egg on your face...

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INF files baffle most driver developers, never mind cartoon animals in the forest. In this article, Brian leads you through the basics of these fearsome creatures. After reading this article, if someone tells you that INF files are too hard for normal mortals, you can reply, "Pooh!"

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In the next issue . . .

Mark Roddy explains the new rules for accessing port or memory registers on a PCI card. Your driver probably needs to be revised in light of this new information.

Bill McKenzie continues his series on 1394 driver programming.

Thomas Divine starts a new series on the PASSTHRU sample in the DDK.

Stephan Wolf explains how to use the NDIS Test Tool.

And much more!

Read more Gotcha! notes

In this issue, Walter Oney describes the basics of an upper filter driver that will monitor changes in RS-232 signal lines on behalf of an application that is not the "regular" user of a COM port.