AsRock MoBo's and Onboard NIC's MAC Address

[JeanLuc7]

Hi,

 

I just installed Leopard on a AsRock ConRoe1333-DVI/H board. This series ships with a small HMDR expansion card for the GMA950. Best choice for my new server - energy saving and best picture quality.

 

I had to downgrade the BIOS from 2.10 to 1.30 as described in the hardware compatibility list. 1.30 is the last BIOS version that is compatible with Leo, higher versions just hang directly after boot. After BIOS downgrade, I went directly to the installation.

 

So I installed Leopard and had to copy some bigger files to the new computer. Some hours later the new machine reported a conflict with an IP used by another machine. I use DHCP so this should not happen. Internet access was partially broken (no pictures, no redirects) and copying files was extremely slow then.

 

I figured out this waa caused by the MAC address of the Onboard LAN. It had changed from the normal address to "ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff". This is a broadcast address and is not used by any device.

 

I thought to bring back the board to my dealer, but then I found out that I was not the only one with that problem. Sometimes AsRock boards "forget" their MAC address and reset it to the "ff" one. I found different tools from AsRock to re-flash the MAC address. I have attached the newest one - you may see trhat they have included flash tools for different chip sets (including my Realtek 8139).

 

Of course it was necessary to upgrade the BIOS back to 2.10 to make the flash software work. It is necessary to run BIOS with Setup Defaults after the upgrade, then to reboot and re-flash the onboard NIC. A second reboot and a BIOS downgrade to 1.30. Rebooted again, ran BIOS with setup defaults and made my options. It is necessary to do all these steps - doing them all at once will fail (I know...)

 

I ended up with my Onboard LAN MAC address back to normal. Of course all network functions are back to normal now.

 

Hope this may help some people.

 

Best

 

JL

macfixtoolasrock.zip