I'm guessing that hack was put in there because the same, or compatible, device has slightly different devids. It would be interesting to look at history and see when it happened. Basically romcc is so smart that it will optimize out the pci_locate_device anyway.
Why would you try and search for a northbridge anyway? I though by definition there is one located at 0:0.0. Does the HT world and dual channel stuff break that?
-- Richard A. Smith