On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 08:53:40 -0400 "Robin Cutshaw" robin@interlabs.com wrote:
Does Atmel not have an Ethernet vendor allocation?
Yes, we do. Each board is shipped with a unique ethernet address. The problem arises when people reprogram u-boot, mess with the flash, etc. (iow use their development board in the way it was intended to be used ;-)
Ideally, a unique MAC would be included on a sticker on each board. This would provide something for each developer to use.
The following pages explain how you can calculate the board's "official" ethernet addresses from the serial number for NGW100 and STK1000:
http://www.avrfreaks.net/wiki/index.php/Documentation:NGW/NGW100_Ethernet_PH... http://www.avrfreaks.net/wiki/index.php/Documentation:STK1000/Ethernet_PHY_a...
I'm not crazy about having a "default" address for reasons already mentioned. What about a randomly generated MAC address should there not be one already set in flash? This would provide for Ulf's no touch initial setup and still provide for a mostly non-dup solution?
For the NGW100, the best solution would be to ask the board controller if it hasn't been set in the environment. That's something we definitely want to implement. Until that happens, I think it's better to fail with a clear error message than trying to use a fixed ethernet address.
Håvard