I noticed this behavior in early versions of the Windows 20xx family, but I found a consistency to it that wasn't mentioned in the article and now I'm left wond

I noticed this behavior in early versions of the Windows 20xx family, but I found a consistency to it that wasn't mentioned in the article and now I'm left wondering if I was completely wrong in my assumption. In my case any USB version 2 device would be detected as "new" if it was plugged into any port other than the one it was first plugged into, however, all of my version 1 devices would work without Windows "forgetting about them" when they were plugged into another port. Does anyone have any insight on this? Did manufacturers supply a serial number more consistently with early version devices or was it just my (somewhat massive) collection of those devices that was at fault?