On Wed, Oct 03, 2018 at 10:15:23PM +0200, Bartosz Golaszewski wrote: > The only user of arch_get_platform_mac_address() is sparc. It returns > an address that seems to be read from some kind of EEPROM. I'm not > familiar with this arch though. I'm wondering if we could somehow > seamlessly remove this call and then convert all users of > eth_platform_get_mac_address() to using device_get_mac_address()?
My recollection is that '90s SparcStations had a battery-backed memory containing the MAC address. When the battery wore out, the machine would fail to boot because the address was either all ones or all zeros. I recall setting the MAC address in that memory using Forth from the boot prompt. Ah, the good old days!
