Of course, in that case, SIS is a reputable brand despite always having been a minority/budget one; a bit different is what's up with the invariably 00:00:00:00:00:02 Bluetooth ELM327 fakes 😉
Jo22 wrote on 2023-01-22, 09:32:That's bad. Isn't there a law that prohibites this? There should be, imho. Going by logic, modification should be prosecuted ci […]
dionb wrote on 2023-01-22, 02:52:Duplicate MACs due to software or user error have been a thing. Repeatedly.
That's bad. Isn't there a law that prohibites this? There should be, imho.
Going by logic, modification should be prosecuted civilly and criminally.
Faking a car's licensing plate isn't legal, either, after all.
At least not if the car drives on public streets, I mean.
If it's on private ground (LAN), it's another matter, of course. This won't harm anyone, after all. 😊
AFAIK most if not all NICs explicitly allow changing the MAC address if for no other reason than some network protocols have required this capability as part of their normal operation ever since Ethernet was first standardised.
But this is something that would be done on startup by software that has its own reasons for changing it - I expect it would be rare to find a NIC that let the user type in a new MAC in a way that persists across power cycles (MACs are supposed to be globally unique so what's the use-case for the user changing it semi-permanently?)
DEC was one of the companies involved in standardising Ethernet (the others were Intel and Xerox - DIX). At the time DEC was big - second only to IBM. Their VAX computers were everywhere and their terminals (starting with the VT100) became a de facto standard. Their DECserver product which allowed multiple terminals to access any Ethernet-connected host (rather than requiring one serial cable per terminal per host) proved very popular and was likely Ethernets "killer feature" for some companies.
So for a time in the 80s and 90s DECs network protocol, DECnet, was fairly common on Ethernet networks. And not just on DEC hardware and operating systems - it was an openly documented protocol and was available for any computer likely to be found networked in a company large enough to be a DEC customer. Most UNIX systems had it as an option, DEC sold Pathworks for DOS, OS/2 and Windows (all the way up to XP), Linux had support until a few years ago, and I believe there was even some stuff for classic MacOS.
And when DECnet starts up it changes the MAC address on all Ethernet adapters to match that computers DECnet address. All ethernet adapters in any computer running DECnet will have the MAC address AA-00-04-00-xx-yy where xx-yy is that computers DECnet address. This of course means if the computer has multiple ethernet adapters they must be on separate LANs (as they'll all have the same MAC).
davidrg wrote on 2023-01-22, 22:27:AFAIK most if not all NICs explicitly allow changing the MAC address if for no other reason than some network protocols have required this capability as part of their normal operation ever since Ethernet was first standardised.
But this is something that would be done on startup by software that has its own reasons for changing it - I expect it would be rare to find a NIC that let the user type in a new MAC in a way that persists across power cycles (MACs are supposed to be globally unique so what's the use-case for the user changing it semi-permanently?)
Agree on all the above, however I'm sure that in the 90s I had an ISA card with a utility that did allow this. I can see use cases (after the event) whereby certain software hard licences tied to specific mac addresses, etc whereby this would be useful.
I've got an RTL8039 based card on the way, and indeed, I happened to find (I think...) what I had thought was unobtainium in a NIC from that original vendor online, complete with their custom boot rom. Will see what happens when it arrives from ebay.
I'm still keen to get 86box working with a full custom MAC, will try to go down that rabbit hole at the weekend. I wish they'd look to include this functionality in the main release, will ask nicely again.
tje wrote on 2023-01-24, 11:53:I've got an RTL8039 based card on the way, and indeed, I happened to find (I think...) what I had thought was unobtainium in a NIC from that original vendor online, complete with their custom boot rom. Will see what happens when it arrives from ebay.
I'm still keen to get 86box working with a full custom MAC, will try to go down that rabbit hole at the weekend. I wish they'd look to include this functionality in the main release, will ask nicely again.
Hmm I cannot find anything on a RTL8039 but RTL8019, RTL8029 and RTL8139 did find. And there are eeprom MAC changers for them....
http://web.archive.org/web/19981205151558/htt … /doc/CN-new.htm
Will post the MAC changers to Vogons library if interested.....
Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun
Horun wrote on 2023-01-25, 02:46:Hmm I cannot find anything on a RTL8039 but RTL8019, RTL8029 and RTL8139 did find. And there are eeprom MAC changers for them....
http://web.archive.org/web/19981205151558/htt … /doc/CN-new.htm
Will post the MAC changers to Vogons library if interested.....
Hi
Sorry to dig up the old thread, this got shelved a while but I'm back to it now.
You're quite right - I mistyled - I did mean 8019, and I've got some of these cards.
I'd be curious to know what you might have by way of mac changers - I have pg8019, which seems to be referenced a lot against an 8bit nic project.
It says success when programming against an 8019 based card, when the .cfg is set with a node ID, however the mac doesn't change.
If you had any pointers to any other rtl8019 mac changers I'd appreciate it.
Thanks in advance!
Replying to myself - I had 2 cards, and the tool I found worked on the second... trying again on the first.
