Appendix B - Glossary
AGP AGP is an extension on the older PCI bus. AGP cards act like a PCI card from software perspective, and were introduced to remove various problems that PCI graphics cards had. AGP have a data bus of 32bits just like the standard PCI bus, but the clockspeed can be much higher. The standard AGP bus speed is 66Mhz whereas PCI is 33Mhz, in addition, the AGP bus can operate at 2x, 4x and 8x mode.
Appendix A - Sources Of Information The information that is needed to develop the driver is in most cases not fully available from the manufacturer. There are however a lot of alternative sources of information available. Possible sources are: The manufacturer. Linux (or freeBSD). The internet. Testing the card to get more specifications. Last but not least, reverse engineering.
In this Supplement we dig some more in these possible sources.
3 - Kernel Driver The part of the graphics driver that exists in the kernel space serves one purpose, to give the accelerant access to the video card. During video driver startup, the kernel driver 'transfers' as much resources as possible to the accelerant in order to allow the accelerant direct access to the video card, without taxing the kernel any further. Resources and information that can not be transferred are instead accessed through the API of the kernel driver component in simple functions.
2 - BeOS API Classes For Video Card Drivers For normal use in BeOS the BScreen class from the Interface Kit is of great importance, because it is the main class that will control the driver. For special application categories such as games or multimedia, there are two classes from the Game Kit that are important; BWindowScreen and BDirectWindow. These special classes are used to enable fast direct access to the graphics card memory (the framebuffer).
1 - Introduction The are a lot of programmers in the world but almost none of them know how to write a driver. Drivers are required for any operating system, in order to talk to the hardware. The lack of knowledgeable driver programmers is a serious problem, and one that I hope to rectify with this document. This document offers practical support on this issue, and is written for people who are interested in knowing basic information about the makeup of a driver and how to write it.
Lessons by DarkWyrm ISBN: 978-0-557-53969-7 (lulu.com) In January of 2010, I started publishing lessons on learning to program for Haiku, aimed at people who want to be able to write simple programs to get stuff done, but never had anyone around teach them. Years ago, I started teaching myself and am an active developer. It's my turn to give back. All of these lessons are distributed under a Creative Commons license which allows free distribution for noncommercial purposes.
The basic installation of Haiku contains several standard system network utilities including SSH and Telnet
Setting your user password A good first step is to set the password for your user account, in order to secure your system before opening it to the world. ~ passwd new password: repeat new password:
To access your Haiku system remotely, you will need to know its network address. Haiku's default hostname is shredder. If shredder doesn't resolve, you can simply launch the Network preference applet to find your system's network address.
The Haiku project has been accepted to participate in Google Summer of Code&trade 2010! Qualifying students can apply for a Haiku project (see the list of suggested projects below) between March 29th and April 9th, 2010. For details about how to apply, please check out Students: How to Apply for a Haiku Idea.
According to other mentor organizations, the most successful Google Summer of Code projects are the ones proposed by the students themselves.
This year, 5 out of 7 students completed their projects
Atis Elsts - IPv6 support Janito Vaqueiro Ferreira Filho - EXT3 filesystem Lucian Adrian Grijincu - Linux Kernel in Haiku userspace (failed - student disappeared for several weeks) Cristopher Humphries - DVD playback in MediaPlayer (failed - student had to withdraw because of misunderstanding with his school) Cristophe Huriaux - HTTP client implementation Nathan Mentley - x86_64 port (failed - project was too complex for the student) Alex Wilson - layout API finalization
Haiku single sheet flier (2010 version) Mid-resolution PDF (adequate for on-demand printing): US Letter | A4 Original files in InDesign format: US Letter Designed by Jorge G. Mare. Released under a Creative Commons Attribution, Noncommercial, Share Alike license.
Additionally, Haiku's Haiku Vector Icon Format (HVIF) icons are available in Haiku's source repository, along with miscellaneous artwork files.
