RE: Order of PCI cards if multiple cards are installed.

[Jeff Dahlin <JDahlin@appiangraphics.com>]

Jeremy,
>From what I have read there is no requirement for how to order the cards in
the PCI spec.  I design multiple monitor graphics cards and have experience
in having the system locate multiple graphics adapters.  I think that it is
a BIOS issue.  The OS makes a BIOS call to get the nth device with a certain
class code.  You can't tell, from system to system, which device it will
locate first.  I have seen systems that report the lowest device on the
lowest numbered bus as the first device and I have seen systems that report
the highest device on the highest numbered bus first.  I believe that it is
the system BIOS doing this because I see this happen on different systems
with the same OS.  

The tag that the BIOS call returns has the bus number, device number and
function number encoded in it.  I assume that this information can somehow
be accessed by a driver or application.  So, if you wanted to, you might be
able to build your own table of devices and use your own selection criteria.
But this still wouldn't help you figure out which physical device the BIOS
located.

Jeff Dahlin




-----Original Message-----
From: Jeremy Sabo [mailto:jeremysabo@hotmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2000 1:15 PM
To: pci-sig@znyx.com
Subject: Order of PCI cards if multiple cards are installed.


Basically, this is my question.

We have multiple network interface cards and want to create  a bootdisk that

can use ONE of these cards.  How would you know which cards would be put 
first in the list of available NICs (by default) under Windows95/98 or NT or

2000?  Is this more of a software question?  Are PCI numbers assigned 
depending on which slot they are in?  Also, if one of the NICs is onboard, 
can I assume that this NIC will be detected first?  Any help would be 
greatly appreciated.   Thank you.

Jeremy
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