New and Changed Features
This revision of the manual documents the following new features:
•
Enabling support for enhanced hardware management
Enhanced hardware management (EHM) allows you to modify hardware
attributes, such as the type of LAN device, on either a local or a remote
system. See Section 3.2 for more information about how a network device
driver uses routines to define and export hardware attributes.
•
The
unattach( )
routine
The
unattach( )
routine stops the network device and frees resources
prior to unloading the device driver or powering off the bus to which the
device is attached. See Chapter 7 for more information.
Organization
This manual is organized as follows:
Chapter 1
Describes the sections that make up a
network driver and compares them to
the sections that are associated with
block and character drivers.
Chapter 2
Describes the device register offset
definitions for the
if_el
device driver’s
associated LAN device, the 3Com 3C5x9
series Ethernet adapter.
Chapter 3
Describes how to define a
softc
data
structure, using the
if_el
device driver’s
el_softc
structure as an example.
Chapter 4
Describes how to implement a
configure
interface, using the
if_el
device driver’s
el_configure( )
routine as an example.
Chapter 5
Describes how to implement a
probe
interface and associated routines, using
the
if_el
device driver’s
el_probe( )
routine as an example.
Chapter 6
Describes how to implement an
attach
interface, using the
if_el
device driver’s
el_attach( )
routine as an example.
Chapter 7
Describes how to implement an
unattach( )
routine to stop the device.
About This Manual xiii