RE: Is is possible to receive a cheep SubVendorID?

[Dave New <NewD@esi.com>]

Actually a VendorID (not Sub) is what you would receive for
a PCISIG membership.

You can usually get a SubVendorID from a chip provider.  For
instance, if you use the AMCC5933, you can let the VendorID
default to AMCC's, then register a new SubVendorID with AMCC
(using the handy tear-out card they provide in their data
book).  Then, your adapter would be uniquely identified by
the combination of AMCC's VendorID and your (AMCC-vended)
SubVendorID.

There was an attempt in the past by a certain operating system
company (who shall remain nameless, except that their
name starts with Micro and ends with Soft 8-) to force
vendors that wanted a Windows logo on their box to have
a unique VendorID for each different board.  This idea,
fortunately, was laid to rest, and I don't believe that
they ever tried to enforce such a scheme.  The PCI spec
certainly doesn't require it.  The problem was that
there were a number of video board vendors that were
using a VGA chipset that had a fixed VendorID and an
unsupported SubVendorID, but each board maker was varying
the chipset implementation on their boards (for market
differentiation, among other things, or to just be
ornery, for all I know 8-).  This made if difficult
for video drivers to find a particular maker's board,
and identify any extensions (TV out, etc) that had
been implemented on that board.

In the meantime, most of those old video chipsets have
bit the dust, and most ones I know of these days support
a programmable (usually from a serial eeprom or similar)
SubVendorID field.  Again, you would get the SubVendorID
from a registration authority at the chip vendor, be it
ATI or C&T or whomever.

Hopefully this makes things a little clearer.  It would
help to know what genre of board you are thinking of doing,
so that one or more of the companies that hang out on this
list could tell you about the way they handle SubVendorID
assignments for their customers.

Cheers,

-- DaveN

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-----Original Message-----
From: F.Pitzl [mailto:F.Pitzl@GMX.DE]
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2000 1:45 PM
To: PCISIG List (E-mail)
Subject: Is is possible to receive a cheep SubVendorID?


Hello Experts,

This is a commercial question, but I hope you have some suggestions to
my problem. We are a small supplier of automatic test systems. For our
new product we want to use a PCI interface card between the PC and
our application. Now my problem is that I was told, the only way to 
receive a SubVendorID is to become, at least one year, a member of
the PCISIG. This means the minimal tax we have to pay are about
$2500 - not really acceptable for a product quantity of 50 cards per
year.
Do you have any suggestions to a cheaper way to receive the SubVendorID
?
Or do you mention to violate the specs and to use a unofficial
SubVendorID?

Regards,
Florian Pitzl