There are a handful of reference book that are useful--look
through the O'Reilly catalog--but this one, _Mac OS X Disaster
Relief_ by Ted?Landau and Dan?Frakes would probably be the
most useful. IMHO, reading a big tome will not get you there;
using the Help system and on-line sites for research might
prove to be more productive. Apple's own knowledgebase and
technote articles are excellent and easy to search, but one can
get lost in there with so much detail and no guidance as to
what is really essential.
This is a good point of reference with lots of links to news and
support sites:
In general, drivers for PCI cards are already included in Mac OS;
the cards just need to be registered in NVRAM for the OS to
detect the chipset on the card and load. This is accomplished
by clearing the memory by depressing the CUDA switch for
several seconds. The CUDA then automatically polls the mobo
at next boot. Any time one does anything at all on any internal
bus, it is A Very Good Idea(TM) to reset the CUDA and let the
machine re-orient itself.
Most Mac software comes with its own installer, or can just be
copied to the Applications folder, creating any support files as
needed when launched.
You'll find that most of your experience with Wintel machines
will serve you well with Macs, once you get past a few key
assumptions. For example, most settings are edited from
within their respective application or control panel/editor
rather than a monolithic Registry. Instead of trying to repair
them, corrupted settings or preferences are usually deleted so
their respective processes can automatically recreate them at
next launch.
HTH.
