Hi, Daniel,
Thanks for your input! As an answer to your question, I teach at Rivier
College, in Nashua, NH. Take a look at http://www.rivier.edu if you want
more info. Unfortunately, I don’t have a logic analyzer, maybe one of these
days I can get my boss to give me enough budget to buy one ? Meanwhile,
it’ll be back to the old software debugger. 
Alberto.
-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel E. Germann [mailto:xxxxx@nospam.visi.com]
Sent: Friday, October 12, 2001 11:19 AM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] RE: What do we need to know as far as OS techniques go
?
Alberto,
One of the things that’s helped me most is to understand a little bit about
hardware. Peter already mentioned device registers and interrupts. I’d add
to that basic background on circular buffers and FIFOs (hopefully, they’ve
already had this in a data structures course) and the architecture of some
simple real-world devices (serial and parallel ports, IDE controllers,
etc.).
If you really want them to be sharp, show them how to use a logic analyzer
to help them debug their driver (they can look at the data they actually
write to device control registers, check the timing between accesses
(required by some devices), etc.). The hardware guys always give me a hard
time when I haul the analyzer into my office… 
Other ideas:
Show them how to implement a serial port using a parallel port (one line for
clock, one line for data, one line for chip select). That’ll teach them
about SPI and I2C techniques. Tell them about USB and 1394 busses, so they
understand the differences between parallel busses (ISA, PCI, etc.) and
serial ones.
Sounds like a great course. I’d have registered for it. Where do you
teach?
-Dan
Dan Germann
xxxxx@nospam.visi.com
----- Original Message -----
Subject: What do we need to know as far as OS techniques go ?
From: “Moreira, Alberto”
> Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 15:16:36 -0400
> X-Message-Number: 36
>
>
> I’m going to stick my head out with this one, and this may be slightly
> off-topic, but what the heck ?
>
> You guys may not know, but I’m also a grad school computer science
teacher.
> I’m going to teach an “Advanced OS” course next Spring to Master Degree
> students. I want to strongly tilt it towards kernel mode development. My
> college has a battery of Win2K workstations, and several “electronic
> classrooms” with thirty or so PCs in them, so I’m not unwilling to teach
the
> students how to write a WDM driver. On the other hand, I’d like to keep
> their eyes open to Linux driver development too. And I want to target it
to
> a professional as opposed to theoretical tack, so that they can do some
real
> work during the course that prospective employers - like some of you
> may eventually be interested in hiring them after they graduate.
>
> If nothing else, I want them to leave my course in a position to be able
to
> understand an OSR course, and immediately start programming after that.
>
> What do you think they should learn as far as WDM and Kernel Mode
> development is concerned ? What basic skills are needed for young
> professionals to get started in our kernel and driver development world ?
> How far is far enough in a 16-week two-hour-a-week lab course ?
>
> Your input is appreciated!
>
>
> Alberto.
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