Patent ID: 6985990

Claim:
A method for operating a peripheral component interface bridge, said bridge including a primary interface to a primary bus and a secondary interface to a secondary bus, with an I/O processor and a plurality of devices on said secondary bus, to prevent a host processor from modifying private devices on said secondary bus, comprising the steps of: initializing a first device on said secondary bus as a rerouted device for redirection; initializing a second device on said secondary bus as a monitoring device for monitoring activation of multiple ID select pins via a single initialization device (ID) select pin; accepting on said primary interface of said bridge a configuration operation from said host processor of Type 1 accessing said first device; and while converting said configuration operation to a Type 0 configuration operation, redirecting said Type 0 configuration operation to said monitoring device, said redirecting including operating a mask register controlling rerouting activation of device select commands addressed to any of a plurality of ID select pins selectively to a single or fewer than all ID select pins.