1 the counter value cnt is tested in a step 56 if the counter vale cnt is less than 4 the steps 58 to 66 are performed again whenever an acknowledge code occurs aci 1 this means that a station is connected to the communication bus which has the same service address type address and follower address as the transmitting master station as soon as those times an acknowledge code has been received the counter value cnt will have the value of four which means that one of the stations has definitely a station address which should not be used by this master station therefore after detection that the counter value cnt u2267 4 a step 72 is carried out wherein the follower address fa is increased by one in a next step 74 it is tested whether the follower address fa differs from the test value tst if so then the initialisation procedure is started again by resetting the counter values cnt and nac to zero in step 54 if the test value tst equals the follower address fa then all different positions of the latter have been used if the follower address fa consists of three bits then after 8 trials with different values for fa the starting value tst will be reached due to the setting of tst equal to fa in step 52 in such a situation the initialization procedure is aborted end.