[U-Boot-Users] why eeprom vs flash

[Edward Jubenville]

Jon Smirl wrote:
> How are the MAC addresses assigned? So if I order ten Ethernet chips
> from Digikey will they come with something from the manufacturer
> indicating which MAC addresses to use?
> Or do I need to register as a vendor and get my own block of addresses?

If you are designing your own board in relatively low quantities, you might
want to look at Maxim chip DS2502-E48.  It holds a guaranteed unique
Ethernet MAC address, and would save you the hassle and cost of registering
to get your own address block.  The chip uses the Dallas/Maxim 1-wire
interface which I don't think u-boot supports (at least, not at the time),
so I wrote a u-boot standalone bit-bang program to print the MAC address,
and I manually set ethaddr in the u-boot environment.

Ed Jubenville