Introduction to Device File Access Guide for Serial I/O

This document describes how to communicate with a serial device from an application running in 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:

See Also

Apple developer documentation provides documents that describe various types and aspects of device access.

If you're ready to create a universal binary version of your serial 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.