About the Slot Manager
plugged into NuBus slots in the Macintosh II and communicate with the
firmware on each card.
Note: the Macintosh SE computer also has slots, but they work differently. For an explanation of Macintosh SE slots, see the book
Designing Cards and Drivers for Macintosh II and Macintosh SE.
application, driver, or operating system that must access a slot card directly.
Otherwise, the standard Macintosh Toolbox and Operating System routines
normally take care of all slot card management, making the Slot Manager transparent to most applications.
Note: When accessing NuBus cards directly, it is important that you
use the standard Slot Manager routines. If you try to bypass them, your application may conflict with other applications and probably
will not work in future Apple computers.
Before trying to use the information in Slot Manager, you should already be familiar with the Device Manager. If you are writing a driver, you should also be familiar with:
• The information in the book Designing Cards and Drivers for
Macintosh II and Macintosh SE.
• The architecture and mode of operation of the specific card or cards
your driver will access.
Slot Card Firmware
Most of the routines described in Slot Manager let you access data or code structures residing in the firmware of all NuBus plug-in cards. These
structures are described in the book Designing Cards and Drivers for
Macintosh II and Macintosh SE. They have certain uniform features that create a
standard interface to the Slot Manager. The principal card firmware structures are the following:
• A format block, containing format and identification information for the card's firmware and an offset to its sResource directory
• An sResource directory, containing an identification number and offset for each sResource list in the firmware
• A Board sResource list, containing information about the slot card itself
• One or more other sResource lists, each of which contains
information about a single sResource in the card's firmware
Do not confuse sResources on plug-in cards with standard Macintosh
resources; they are different, although related conceptually. Every
sResource has a type and a name. It may also have an icon and driver code in
firmware, and may define a region of system memory allocated to the card it is
in. Such sResources are treated like devices. Some sResources, however,
may contain only data--for example, special fonts. You must understand the
specific nature of an sResource before trying to access it with the Slot The physical location of a slot card's firmware is called its declaration
of all sResources currently available in the system.
For full details about slot card firmware, see the book: Designing Cards and
Drivers for Macintosh II and Macintosh SE.
that communicate with NuBus card firmware. They fall into three distinct
categories:
• Principal Slot Manager Routines are available to drivers and
applications that need to perform slot management tasks beyond those
automatically provided by the system. Their principal purpose is to
find the slot devices and open their drivers.
The description of each Slot Manager routine specifies which parameters are required for communication with the routine. A
right-pointing arrow indicates that the parameter is an input to the
routine; a left-pointing arrow indicates that it is an output. Other
parameters whose values may be affected by the routine are also listed.
Parameters not mentioned remain unchanged.
• Specialized Slot Manager Routines are used only by drivers.
They find data structures in slot card firmware.
• Advanced Slot Manager Routines are used only by the Macintosh
II Operating System. They are described only for completeness.