Apple Technical Notes

Apple Technical Notes answer many specific questions about the operation of Macintosh computers and the Mac OS. The technical notes are available on the Technical Note website at

http://developer.apple.com/technotes/

PowerPC G5 Microprocessor

Information about the PowerPC G5 microprocessor is available on the IBM website at Power Architecture Offerings.

Velocity Engine (AltiVec)

Velocity Engine is Apple’s name for the AltiVec vector processor in the PowerPC G5 microprocessor. Apple provides support for developers who are starting to use the Velocity Engine in their applications. Documentation, development tools, and sample code are now available on the World Wide Web, at

http://developer.apple.com/hardwaredrivers/ve/index.html

Freescale's implementation of Apple's Velocity Engine is named AltiVec. The AltiVec Technology Programming Environments Manual (AltiVec PEM) is a reference guide for programmers. It contains a description for each instruction and information to help in understanding how the instruction works. You can obtain a copy of the AltiVec PEM through the Freescale AltiVec website.

Mac OS X and Mac OS Server

For access to Apple’s developer documentation for Mac OS X, see the website at

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/MacOSX/MacOSX.html

and

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Reference/Multiprocessing_Services/

For information on Apple’s server documentation for Mac OS X, see the website at

http://developer.apple.com/server/

O'Reilly & Associates publishes a series of books about Mac OS X development. The books in this series have been technically reviewed by Apple engineers and are recommended by the Apple Developer Connection.

I/O Kit

The I/O Kit is part of Darwin, the operating system foundation for Mac OS X. The documentation for I/O Kit is available on Apple’s Darwin website at

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Darwin.html

ROM-in-RAM Architecture

The system software in all current Macintosh computers uses a ROM-in-RAM approach, also called the NewWorld architecture. For more information refer to ROM-in-RAM.

Open Firmware

The software architecture implemented on current Macintosh computers follows the standard defined by the Open Firmware IEEE 1274-1994 specification. Three Technical Notes provide an introduction to Open Firmware on the Macintosh platform. They are

TN 1061: Open Firmware, Part I, available on the technical note web site at

http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1061.html

TN 1062: Open Firmware, Part II, at

http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1062.html

TN 1044: Open Firmware, Part III, at

http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1044.html

Other technical notes provide additional information about Open Firmware on the Macintosh.

TN 2000: PCI Expansion ROMs and You, at

http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn2000.html

TN 2001: Running Files from a Hard Drive in Open Firmware, at

http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn2001.html

TN 2004: Debugging Open Firmware Using Telnet, at

http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn2004.html

RAM Expansion Modules

The Xserve G5 uses (DDR400) PC3200-compliant, 184-pin DDR SDRAM DIMMs.

The electrical and mechanical characteristics of the DIMM are given in JEDEC Standard 21-C. The specification can be found by using the search string JESD21-C on the Electronics Industry Association’s website at

http://www.jedec.org/DOWNLOAD/default.cfm

ATA Devices

Information about ATA is available on the world wide web at

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/DeviceManagers/ata/ata.html

Information about the ATA standards is available at the Technical Committee T13 AT Attachment website, at

http://www.t13.org/

Ethernet

For information on Ethernet specifications and design guides, go to the World Wide Web at

http://standards.ieee.org/

Serial ATA

For information on Serial ATA specifications and design guides, go to the World Wide Web at

http://www.serialata.org

USB Interface

For more information about USB on the Macintosh computer, refer to Apple Computer’s Accessing Hardware from Applications at

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/HardwareDrivers/index.html

For full specifications of the Universal Serial Bus, you should refer to the USB Implementation Forum on the World Wide Web, at:

http://www.usb.org/developers/docs

FireWire Interface

For additional information about the FireWire 400 IEEE 1394a and FireWire 800 IEEE 1394b interfaces and the Apple APIs for FireWire software, refer to the resources available at

http://developer.apple.com/hardwaredrivers/firewire/index.html

The IEEE 1394a nd 1394b standards are available from the IEEE; you can order that document electronically from the IEEE Standards Department website at

http://shop.ieee.org/store

You may also find useful information at the 1394 trade association’s website at

http://www.1394ta.org/

EIA Rack Standards

The Electronics Industries Association standard for 19-inch racks and cabinets are available from Global Engineering Documents at http://global.ihs.com/.

Serial Interface Standards

The Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) is the trade organization that publishes the standards for the RS-232 serial interface. To obtain copies of the standards, you can contact the TIA’s web page at

http://www.tiaonline.org/standards/