First device driverhow to get started

says...

There is a fairly decent book (several editions out, try and get the latest), called Linux Device Drivers by Rubini that serves fairly well, but it would help to have some idea of what kind of driver he is interested in. There is a fairly wide spectrum of complexity in drivers overall, everything from talking to a simple I-o device, up to storage controller, network, video, etc. In general, character drivers vs. block drivers, scsi (they are a world of their own) and network drivers seems a decent way to group them.

Just a suggestion, but don't start with one of the higher level drivers in the network or storage areas. Not a good starting point.

Pick some DIY I-o card from an electronics mail order catalog that has good documentation but maybe only supports windows, and use that as a starting point to get Linux driver knowledge. Or, if you want to learn from a working implementation, pick one that has open source linux drivers available, and crack them open and start playing around with that. You might even fix a bug or three. :-)

-- Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR) "Making it hard to do stupid things often makes it hard to do smart ones too." -- Andrew Koenig