RE: Vendor ID

["Kimmery, Clifford (FL51)" <kimmery@space.honeywell.com>]

If you use the invalid value '0xFFFF', your software may not be able to
tell the difference between your device and a non-existent device.  Page
186 allows (even encourages) host bridges to convert a Master Abort on a
configuration read into a return value of all ones.  This allows
configuration software to scan the bus reading vendor IDs and marking
all that return 0xFFFF as non-existent without paying the penalty of an
interrupt or other fault every time a Master Abort occurs.

It isn't clear from your question that you need a vendor ID.  The PCI
vendor ID is used to identify a PCI interface device, not the board
containing it.  If you are developing an interface device you need a
vendor ID, otherwise the manufacturer of the device you are using will
already have one.

Cliff Kimmery
Honeywell Inc.
kimmery@space.honeywell.com


>----------
>From: 	Wilson Leung[SMTP:wilsonl@cs.sfu.ca]
>Sent: 	Wednesday, April 23, 1997 1:52 PM
>To: 	Mailing List Recipients
>Subject: 	Vendor ID
>
>A condition added to the previous question:
>   we are not currently a PCI SIG member. i.e. no vendor ID has 
>   been assigned to us.
>>Hi PCI experts,
>>Is there a vendor ID for cards that are still in development stage?
>>I considered using someone else ID temporily.  However, it is not
>>a good solution as it may confuse software that depends on the
>>ID to determine what the card is.
>>Also, there is an "invalid value" in the spec on p.188.  Is it
>>okay to use that one?  What does invalid means anyway?
>
>Thanks
>
>
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