How to flash a NIC's MAC address?

[saabman]

Hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

Hardware: Tyan S2425 (P3) dual onboard ethernet nics

Problem: One of the nics has a MAC address of FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF, the other nic is fine

I'm guessing it didn't get flashed correctly, or someone messed with it.

I can sorta get around this in software (i.e. specify a temporary MAC address), but all the auto-negotiation capability is missing and this goes away on reboot.

I've sent an email to Tyan 2 weeks ago with no response.

Anybody know what they use during motherboard mfg to flash the MAC address?

 

[praveentech]

hi saabnam use "AMAC ADDRESS CHANGE" software to change the mac address.

 

[saabman]

Originally posted by: praveentech
hi saabnam use "AMAC ADDRESS CHANGE" software to change the mac address.

Thanks p,

But I'm currently running freeBSD (actually m0n0wall firewall software) on this mb, so a win application isn't gonna cut it.

I was hoping for some info on what the mfgs use as a program, as I remember using a standard PC on ethernet to do it to the Macintosh nics we manufactured at Asante many years ago.

 

[cmetz]

saabman, that's typically a symptom of your device driver not reading the serial EEPROM correctly. Try a Linux boot disk or a Windows install and see if that NIC has a MAC address then.

 

[saabman]

Thanks cmetz.

Doesn't matter how many OS distros I try (XP SP2, Ubuntu, FC4, FC5, puppylinux, freeBSD, etc), I get the same problem every time.

I know how to use ifconfig in linux and ipconfig in XP to change the MAC address to something else, but it's obvious the EEPROM for that specific MAC chip has been flashed with the universal broadcast address (FF:FF:. . . . .). But the rest of the auto-negotiation info contained in the EEPROM is also missing (almost like this was a misconfigured board during manufacture). By the way, I have reflashed with the latest BIOS.

As I said above, I know there are PC programs that can do this and I've seen an ECS reference talking about how to do it with ECS BIOS reflashes.

Is the answer only to have the mfg reflash the mb (Tyan hasn't answered my week old email yet and the board is a older P3 board), I'm quite dissapointed in Tyan.

Just hoping to get someone who knows more about flashing MAC addresses to provide me with some more info (even a PM would be OK).

 

[cmetz]

saabman, either the chip itself is bad, the connection to it is bad, or the contents are bad. In the latter case, the chip might or might not be field reprogrammable (they can also be programmed at the factory before putting them on the board, or using certain manufacturing-specific tools). Odds are not good that you will be able to rescue this NIC. I would suggest that you use a PCI NIC and move on.