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This revision to Designing PCI Cards and Drivers for Power Macintosh Computers includes corrections to the material in the original document and incorporates information that PCI card and device driver developers need to know about the NewWorld architecture introduced in the iMac computer and incorporated in Macintosh computers released after the iMac.
The book describes the Macintosh implementation of the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) local bus established by the PCI Special Interest Group. It also describes the Macintosh Open Firmware model, and provides the definitive reference for Power Macintosh native device drivers and the Macintosh Name Registry.
The PCI local bus standard defines a high-performance interconnection method between plug-in expansion cards, integrated I/O controller chips, and a computer's main processing and memory system.
The first generation of Power Macintosh computers--the Power Macintosh 6100, 7100, and 8100 models--supported NuBus expansion cards. Subsequent Power Macintosh models support the PCI standard. This book contains useful information for developers who want to design PCI expansion cards and their associated software to be compatible with Macintosh computers.
The information about PowerPC native device drivers, the Macintosh Name Registry, and the Driver Services Library in Part 4 of this document is not specific to PCI cards. The reference material found in those chapters is useful to anyone interested in writing device drivers for peripherals connected to Power Macintosh computers released after the PCI bus architecture became part of the Macintosh hardware design.
This book is general and does not provide model specific details. You should refer to the developer notes that accompany each Macintosh product release for exact details of that product's PCI implementation.
This document is written for professional hardware and software engineers. You should be generally familiar with existing Macintosh technology, including Mac OS (the Macintosh system software) and the Apple RISC technology based on the PowerPC microprocessor. For recommended reading material about Macintosh and PowerPC technology, see the documents listed in Supplementary Documents.