About This Manual

This manual discusses how to write network device drivers for computer systems that run the Compaq Tru64™ UNIX operating system.

Audience

This manual is intended for systems engineers who:

Use standard library routines to develop programs in the C language

Know the Bourne shell or some other shell that is based on the UNIX operating system

Understand basic Tru64 UNIX concepts such as kernel, shell, process, configuration, and autoconfiguration

Understand how to use the Tru64 UNIX programming tools, compilers, and debuggers

Develop programs in an environment that involves dynamic memory allocation, linked list data structures, and multitasking

Understand the hardware device for which the driver is being written

Understand the basics of the CPU hardware architecture, including interrupts, direct memory access (DMA) operations, and I/O

Before you write a network device driver, we recommend that you be familiar with the networking subsystem that the Tru64 UNIX operating system provides. This manual assumes that you are familiar with the following network interface types:

Ethernet

Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI)

Token Ring

See the Tru64 UNIX Technical Overview for descriptions of the data link media.

This manual also assumes that you have some knowledge of the Tru64 UNIX network programming environment, particularly:

Data link provider interface

X/Open transport interface

Sockets

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Compaq AA-RNG2A-TE manual About This Manual, Audience