I have a SPARCstation SLC which seems to have "forgotten" its MAC address. On power up it reports an address of FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF. On booting (Solaris 2.4) it reports "Invalid format code in IDprom".
I can work around this problem by doing "ifconfig le0 ether ...",
but has anyone an idea how to fix it?
The answers (heavily condensed):
http://www.rahul.net/squirrel/sun-nvram-hostid.faq.html
Basically you need to replace your NVRAM chip. Cost is about US$20.
Read the Sun NVRAM/hostid FAQ.
http://www.squirrel.com/squirrel/sun-stuff.html
Time to buy a new prom. The battery failed. You can get a replacement
one from Sun, but if you don't have a hardware contract you'll probably
want to buy one third-party and save some money. I don't know of any
European suppliers, though, so I probably can't help you there...
You can just change it back to what it was at prom or use a c prog from
OS.
just have a look at http://www.sunhelp.com/faq/nvram.html
Its usually a problem with the chip/battery and perhaps should be
replaced.