Gotta start somewhere ... how many of us are really out there?

[Antony Mawer]

On 4/08/2006 10:29 AM, User Freebsd wrote:
> I was thinking of that ... my concern, and it may be totally invalid, 
> but is it guaranteed to always translate the same?  ie:
> 
...
> 
> Will that always translate the same regardless of running 4.x vs 5.x vs 
> ... ?  If so, you are right, that does greatly simplify things ... I 
> just wasn't 100% certain ...

The text may change slightly, but if anything, wouldn't it be better if 
all your stats consistently referred to the same device IDs with the 
same strings?

A vendor name may be updated in the list (company gets bought out, 
renamed, etc), but I'm fairly sure nothing ever gets *removed* from the 
list - it just grows as new devices and vendors are added over time.

The important information is the ID numbers -- the text attached to them 
will always be the same in meaning, even if the text may vary a few 
letters here or there (ie. a device ID that was a Pro/1000 NIC won't 
suddenly turn into a Realtek 8139 one day).

The non-verbose information is all you need for building a stats 
database. Your stats database can have its own database of the 
pcidevs.txt imported periodically, and link the information up at 
display time.

-Antony