PC hardware documentation

modified: 24 Jan 2005

(This page is incomplete -- suggestions are invited!)

Q: Where can I find good pc hardware documentation?  I need to learn
how to program PCI and ISA busses, videos cards, sound cards, network
cards, etc...?  Is there any good book available, or perhaps web
sites?

Here are some ideas:

For hardware similar to already supported devices look in the Minix 
source code. Also source code for other freely available systems such
as Linux and FreeDOS may be helpful.

The Linux Device Driveftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/programming/helppc21.zip>
rs book is available online at
http://www.xml.com/ldd/chapter/book/ and is also available as a
hard-copy book, It doesn't contain any Minix specifics but is good for
understanding the PCI and ISA buses.

Chapter 3 of Alvin Beach's report on creating a network card driver
describes PCI bus for Minix-vmd.  The chapter lists the PCI routines
for Minix-vmd, which are similar to those in standard Minix.  It is
available at
http://users.eastlink.ca/~alvinbeach/portfolio/3c920/3c905C_report-1.1.pdf

The
ftp://ftp.crynwr.com/drivers/
Crnwyr packet driver collection provides free MS-DOS
assembly source code for a large number of different ethernet adapters.

For older PCs, try to find a copy of the _PC Programmer's PC Sourcebook_ 
by Thom Hogan (1991).

The x86 Interrupt List, also known as Ralf Brown's Interrupt List is 
available at
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/ralf/pub/WWW/files.html 

The Internet FAQ Archives: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/

HELPPC21 contains a lot of detailed information on interrupts, and
hardware interfaces.  It can be downloaded from
ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/programming/helppc21.zip

http://www.beyondlogic.org/