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

Colin McGregor colin.mc151 at gmail.com
Tue Jul 22 14:54:26 UTC 2008


On 6/23/08, Colin McGregor <colin.mc151 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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...)).

Just to follow-up on the above, the motherboard went into ASUS and has
been returned, with exactly the same problem, as far as I can tell the
motherboard was not touched!!! So, I have been back on the phone to
ASUS and am now waiting for a response from their 2nd level tech
support (sigh...).

Colin McGregor


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