From: black.hole.4.spam{at}gmail.com (Don Hills)

In article , "Rich"  wrote:
>   64K more than enough?  Maybe for mca which failed.

EISA had a 4 byte ID. How many EISA IDs were assigned?

PCI has a 5 byte ID. How many unique IDs have been generated to date?

In all 3 cases, the address space is much more sparsely populated than, for
example, the IPv4 address space.

>   As for identifying compatible devices, mca lacks this mechanism.
>It's entirely a guessing game.  The PCI approach is that the device
>identifies with what it is compatible.

That wasn't allowed. The device driver had to recognise the adapter ID.
This ensured that the device driver had actually been tested with the
adapter and proven to work reliably. Mainframe mindset.

--
Don Hills    (dmhills at attglobaldotnet)     Wellington, New Zealand
"New interface closely resembles Presentation Manager,
 preparing you for the wonders of OS/2!"
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