USB development: Do you NEED the vendor ID?

[blcpro]

I'm doing some development work for a USB-connected printer. Since I havn't done a USB design before, does anyone know if you really need to purchase the Vendor ID. Can you do development work without one? I realize that the USB host (like Windows2000) tries to associate the vendor ID and product ID with a set of device drivers, so couldn't you just make up some until your device is working properly? And are you legally allowed to use the term 'USB' if you have not purchased the Vendor ID?

Just out of curiosity, if anyone has used the Philips ISP1181 for their USB peripheral, what did you think of it? Any major hurdles to using it?

Thanks for any help...

 

[ChefGroovy]

I've been developing a USB keyboard card, using Cypress as the processor. Seems to work pretty well so far, and fairly straight forward. They offer an excellent emulator/dev kit. Kinda long lead time on them, like 12 weeks for 5k of em. And they don't do masked code, so each has to be programmed by a vendor before being placed.

Not sure about vendor ID, still tweaking the code. We used the default "Cypress" as the vendor ID for first run. That will change eventually I hope, have to talk to chief engineer to get ins and outs on that one.