Re: network issues / no network

On 9/23/25 04:06, Riccardo Mottola wrote:
> Hi Julian,
> 
> Julian Coleman wrote:
>> "ef" in the first byte seems wrong.  From a quick check of wikipedia:
>>
>>    "Universal/local and individual/group bits in MAC addresses"
>>
>>    "Multicast (group)" "XF-XX-XX-XX-XX-XX"
> 
> You got it, keen eye. Thanks! I switched two bytes with a high undesired 
> effect...  interesting that there was no error of any kind. All FF 
> paradoxically almost worked better, making the system download but not 
> reach other system in the local network.
> 
> Once MAC address was set to a more sensible value, I was able to boot, 
> download... and upgrade to NetBSD 9.3 and then 9.4!
> 
>>
>> I don't think that anyone will complain if you reuse Sun's 08:00:20 for
>> the first half.
> 
> I actually think it is a good idea to keep Sun, in case of detection.
> 

I use it all the time for many things and that includes trivial VMware
instances. It works.

> 
> I meant: SUN could have just put on the machine a sticker with the full 
> mac address like Apple and other computers did. It is onboard ethernet 
> anyway.

Usually the MAC address is somewhere visible. On just about every Sun
server I have seen. Unless this is something very very old and obscure
like a quad ethernet SBus card for a SPARCStation 20.

-- 
--
Dennis Clarke
RISC-V/SPARC/PPC/ARM/CISC
UNIX and Linux spoken