From: ClaudeVMS [claudevms@freevms.org] Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 11:58 PM To: Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com Subject: Re: VMS NT/win2000 similarities The short answer is to pick an online bookstore and search on Windows books. For the long answer read on... Don't forget the following sources: MSDN subscription from Microsoft. This contains all the public and published API information for NT/2000/XP and the device driver kit. It also contains NOTHING on how to touch kernel data structures unless you need to for writing a driver. Windows NT/2000 Native API Reference by Gary Nebbett is full of undocumented API information. Undocumented Windows NT by Dabak, Phadke, and Borate is also great! This book speaks to using SoftICE to snoop around the OS in addition to the kernel mode debugger. David Solomon has a book called "Inside Windows NT 2ed." that is greate because he shows you how to look at kernel data structures with the kernel mode debugger. There is also a 3ed. out now that addresses 2000 completely and has some cool tools included. I may be buying this soon... There are at least 3 books on device drivers for Windows that covers the IRP usage, etc. I guess I should drop some names so: I own two books by Walter Oney and I like his style and how he explains driver writing and other topics. Chris Cant's "Writing Windows WDM Device Drivers" is good too! "Windows 2000 Kernel Debugging " looks good from the quick read I did at SoftPro Books. If you have lots of cash try a class at http://www.osr.com. I read "Windows NT Device Driver Development " by Viscarola and Mason who work at OSR. More name dropping I know... I haven't found a book like "Hitchiker's Guide to VMS" that addresses touching kernel mode data structures like you can through VMS. Bruce Ellis if you see this post THANK YOU!!! for this really excellent book!!! Windows is very 'NIX like in that change mode kernel system services don't exist!!! You have to write dummy device drivers and do opens on devices and call IOCTLs to get at functions in the "driver". Someone should write the change mode kernel system service for Windows since the Dabak book explains how to add new system calls to Windows. If you are a fan of ASTs you will be bummed out over how APCs are implemented in Windows. For a process to process a "user mode" APC the process must be "alertable" - that is to say doing nothing but waiting for the APC to knock on the door. Shades of 'NIX polling - yuck!!! IMHO what makes VMS "VMS" are the following: 1. There is a single I/O model - $QIO 2. The underlying layer of VMS is the cluster itself. 3. The DLM is integrated into the OS and very much so integrated into the file system. Windows is missing the boat with: 1. I/O model for network, GDI, and disk 2. No cluster foundation 3. No integrated DLM. If you ever read a book on Windows tuning they warn against setting the registry entry for nonpaged pool size to anything but "0" since Windows calculates the value itself. When I think about the DLM database being nonpaged ocean I wonder if Windows could handle a kernel mode DLM? I bought a copy of VAXCluster Principles a while back and Roy Davis explains in such detail the true under pinnings of the technology that makes VMS "VMS". So now you know that I have a large book budget and they all received a good review from me. That's because I spend at least 30 minutes reading the book at the store prior to buying - I only buy the good ones. There are more good ones but current funding prevents me from acquiring them... ClaudeVMS The above comments and opinions are not my own. They all belong to Rush Limbaugh - so sue him!!! I'm just a mind numbed robot!!! "Nic Clews" wrote in message news:3B939306.5073139D@127.0.0.1... > Anamika wrote: > > > > Are there any resources that talk about more of this ? > > There is (was) a book called "Windows NT for OpenVMS professionals", > David Solomon with Debra Wasserman, published by Digital Press, ISBN > 1-55558-122-6. Digital part number is EY-T856E-DP. Published in 1996, It > covers NT 3 and elements of NT4, compared with OpenVMS V7.0. I like this > book because it lists the similarities and the differences. I guess some > elements may be out of date. It also has some interesting history of NT. > > -- > Regards, Nic Clews CSC Computer Sciences > nclews at csc dot com