Every ISAPNP card supports a readable resource data structure that describes the resources supported and those requested by the card. This structure supports the concept of multiple functions (or "logical devices") for ISA card. A separate set of "tags" or "descriptors" are associated with each function of the card. Using this tag information, the ISAPNP enumerator constructs two hardware identifiers, formatted as:

ISAPNP\m(3)d(4)

*m(3)n(4)

where m(3)d(4) together make up an EISA-style identifier for the device—three letters to identify the manufacturer and 4 hexadecimal digits to identify the particular device.

The following pair of hardware IDs might be produced by a specific function on a multifunction card:

ISAPNP\CSC6835_DEV0000

*CSC0000

The first of the two hardware IDs is the device ID. If the device in question is one function of a multifunction card, the device ID takes this form:

ISAPNP\m(3)d(4)_DEVn(4)

where n(4) is the decimal index (with leading zeros) of the function.

The second of the two hardware identifiers is also a compatible ID. The ISAPNP enumerator generates one or more compatible IDs the first of which is always the second hardware ID. The first three characters, m(3), that follow the "*" in an ISAPNP-compatible ID are frequently "PNP." For example, the compatible ID for a serial port might look like this:

PNP0501