MAC address changed

[Mike Jeays]

On Tue, 08 Apr 2014 03:05:40 +0200
"Michael Ross" <gmx at ross.cx> wrote:

> On Tue, 08 Apr 2014 02:18:32 +0200, Mike Jeays <mike.jeays at rogers.com>  
> wrote:
> 
> > More hardware related than FreeBSD - I have an old Pentium 4 with
> > a Realtek network card, that I use for backups. I had a power failure
> > yesterday, and on reboot, the MAC address on the card has changed from
> > 00:e0:18:94:55:89
> > to
> > 00:e0:18:94:e0:89
> >
> > Anyone have an explanation for this surprising behaviour?
> 
> RealTek has produced really bad cards for a while,
> you may have one of those ( especially if it is from the Pentium 4 days ).
> 
> http://www.fefe.de/linuxeth/realtek.txt ( from 2001 )
> "For example RealTeks tend to change their MAC-Address wihtout motivation."
> 
> I've never noticed MAC changes, but I've had bad performance problems
> with 8139 cards -- maxing out at ~70MBit.
> Best to use another one, really.
> 
> 
> Michael
> 
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I tried Joshua Lokken's suggestion, and turned the machine off for half an
hour or so. The MAC address magically reverted back to its original value.
It is such an old machine I will put up with it for now, but the card is
clearly due for replacement. Thanks for the suggestions.

The link above is quite entertaining, and not at all complimentary.