The Fedora Hardware Project

[David Zeuthen]

Bill Nottingham said:
> Storing brand names is a pain, as there will be 4000 branding variants
> of a particular device. (Video cards are a classic example, there are
> 5000 ways to spell out GeForce2).  When you have large amounts of
> user data like this, you'll need a good way to go through and
> verify all the submissions for typos, variations in spelling,
> variations in wording, etc. Otherwise the list can become
> unmanageable.

Note that PCI has the concept of both (vendor_id, product_id) and
(subsystem_vendor_id, subsystem_product_id). Now, for instance, all
videocards with GeForce 2 MX chipsets will (as I understand it) report
the same (vendor_id, product_id); the integrator, e.g. the name that is
on the shrink-wrapped box, will set only the subsystem* parameters.

It doesn't appear that USB supports this concept unfortunatly.

The pci.ids and usb.ids database will help you map the *_id numbers
to names.

Cheers,
David