Windows Driver Framework

June 2, 2003. Microsoft hosted an online chat about the new Windows Driver Framework (WDF). The full transcript is available at this site.

Here are some highlights:

• WDF is planned to ship as part of Longhorn
• WDF is presently packaged as a static library, but may be distributed in the end as a DLL.
• The next beta release of WDF will coincide with the DDC planned for November. (See the next news article for more information.)

Click here to read last issue's survey article on WDF.

Windows Driver Development Conference

June 17, 2003. Microsoft has announced a conference on Windows driver development to be held November 11-14, 2003, in Redmond. Click here to read all about it.

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All the driver gurus have been advising you to use HAL PORT calls for CmResourceTypePort resources, possibly after calling MmMapIoSpace if the CM_RESOURCE_TYPE_PORT flag is clear. Oops! It turns out that you need to check the translated resource type and make either PORT or REGISTER calls, depending on what you find. Lots of drivers need to be rewritten, and Mark's article will show you how.

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One class of bugs that drivers can have involves giving the system the address of a function or a data object and then allowing the memory that contains that function or object to disappear too soon. Work items, kernel threads, DPC routines, lookaside lists, and other components of a driver, are examples. This article explains several problems in this class and shows you how to prevent them from crashing the system.

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Did you ever wonder why network drivers account for so few system crashes? As Stephan explains in this tutorial, it's because the NDIS Test Tool puts these drivers through an exhaustive set of fiendish tests. Read this article to learn where to get the tool, how to install it, and how to set up your test system to take advantage of the information it can give you.

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The Microsoft® Windows® Driver Development Kit (DDK) PassThru NDIS Intermediate (IM) driver sample provides an excellent introduction to the mechanics of implementing a skeleton NDIS IM filter driver. However, the PassThru sample stops short of actually illustrating any observable function. To be of any actual use you must take the next step and add functionality of your own to the skeleton driver. If you are new to Windows driver development and/or NDIS drivers, then the next step can be a big one. Tom's article shows how to take this step.

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1394 Node-Targeted Asynchronous Transfers
by Bill McKenzie

If you can say the name of this article three times fast, maybe you don't need to read it. Assuming, that is, that you already understand how to do asynchronous transfers on the 1394 bus. If you've passed that test, your name is Bill McKenzie, who wrote this article for the rest of us.

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Did you know that you can package up a bunch of your favorite kernel-mode helper routines into a SYS file that acts just like a DLL? Read Tim Roberts' article to learn the mechanics of this useful, but little known, technique.