[mythtv-users] Yet another motherboard Grrr. The ASUS M2N-MX SE PLUS

[Colin McGregor]

On 6/23/08, Roger Heflin <rogerheflin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mark Greenwood wrote:
>>> PCI: BIOS Bug: MCFG area at e0000000 is not E-820-reserved
>>> PCI: Not using MMCONFIG
>>> 0000:00:07.0 Invalid Mac address detected: b5:52:17:C6:1f:00
>>> Please complain to your hardware vendor. Switching to a random MAC.
>>
>> The MAC address is the hardware address of your network adapter. This is
>> very strange, I've worked in LAN networking for 20 years
>>  and never come across that. It's the right number of digits so I'm not
>> sure why it's complaining.
>>
>
> About 1-2 years ago, with nvidia chipset based boards, a couple of different
> MB
> makers started accidently reseting the MAC addresses to a "default" one on a
> bios update, I know at least 2-3 different MB makers had the issue (so it
> leads
> one to believe that the problem was deeper than the MB maker), though it at
> least some of those cases the MAC address was obviously funny,
> (AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF), I know in at least one of the MB makers updates the MAC
> address did not look funny until you noticed that several different machines
> now
> had the same MAC address, and it was possible to put all of those possible
> "default" mac addresses into software to catch and inform of being suspect.
>
> I would suggest seeing if you MB has a label on it telling you what its mac
> address is (the box may have that on it), and see if it matches what Linux
> is
> seeing, if it does not, then either the bios update reset it incorrectly, or
> Linux is reading it incorrectly.   If you watch the network boot it should
> also
> indicate what MAC address it is attempting to boot, and if that matches what
> Linux sees, and does not match what the MB says, something happened.
>
> If the bios update did mess it up, there are usually utilities/options to
> correct it sometimes on the bios update utility, sometimes on other
> utilities,
> if needed the MB maker can likely tell you the procedure to correct it.
>
>                          Roger

Well, I have grumbled LOUDLY at ASUS and I now have an RMA number, so
hopefully that will get the MAC address resolved (first grumble here
being this COULD be fixed via changes to the BIOS. Second big grumble
being about having to ship the motherboard to the ASUS US office in
Indiana (the ASUS Canadian office is less than a one hour drive from
my home...)).

Colin McGregor