Platform Specific Drivers

Description
OS/2 SMP provides a level of hardware abstraction using the Platform Specific Driver, or PSD. Like a device driver that shields an application from the speicifics of a particular device, the PSD isolates the OS/2 kernel from the specific processor hardware. To provide this layer of abstraction, the PSD exports generic functions that the kernel can call. These functions are translated by the PSD into operations that are specific to the hardware platform.

PSDs are special flat-model device drivers, and are actually 32-bit DLLs loaded with the DEVICE= statement in the CONFIG.SYS file. Like OS/2 ADDs, they must conform to the 8.3 naming convention, and the name must not contain any drive or path information.

OS/2 SMP requires a PSD for system initialization. The system will display an error message if a valid PSD for the current platform cannot be installed. If any step does not complete successfully, the system initialization process will stop, and an error message will be displayed.

Documentation

 * The OS/2 API Project - Platform Specific Drivers Functions

Related Articles

 * Writing Device Drivers - A Brief Look at OS/2 SMP

External References

 * PSD related information from the SMP Programming Addendum