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Introduction to Device File Access Guide for Storage Devices

Contents:

Organization of This Document
See Also

This document describes how to communicate with a storage device from an application running in Mac OS X. Before you read this document, you should be familiar with the I/O Kit's device interface mechanism and device matching in particular. To learn about these things, read Accessing Hardware From Applications.

Organization of This Document

This document contains the following chapters:

• “Working With Device Files for Storage Devices” guides you through a sample application that uses I/O Kit functions to find a storage device and POSIX functions to communicate with it.

• “Document Revision History” lists the changes to this document.

See Also

The ADC Reference Library contains documents that describe various types and aspects of device access, as well as numerous sample applications.

• I/O Kit Fundamentals describes the I/O Kit (the object-oriented driver-development framework of Mac OS X) and provides an overview of device-access options for applications.

• Accessing Hardware From Applications describes many ways applications can access devices and provides in-depth information on the device interface mechanism of the I/O Kit.

• I/O Kit Framework Reference contains API reference for I/O Kit methods and functions and for specific device families, such as USB.

• Mac OS X Man Pages provides access to existing reference documentation for BSD and POSIX functions and tools in a convenient, HTML format.

If you're ready to create a universal binary version of your storage device-access application to run in an Intel-based Macintosh, see Universal Binary Programming Guidelines, Second Edition. That document describes the differences between the Intel and PowerPC architectures and provides tips for developing a universal binary.

A detailed description of the UNIX file system is beyond the scope of this document, but there are many books and websites you can refer to. In particular, you can get information on the POSIX standard at http://standards.ieee.org.

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