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Indy NVRAM reprogramming
If you have a maintenance contract with SGI, they will do this for you. If you want to do this yourself, Soren S. Jorvang has explained how to correct an invalid code (MAC address) for an Indy's ethernet card in the NVRAM chip. This can be checked by typing in a shell 'nvram | grep eaddr'. The output should show an output of the form 'eaddr=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx') where the 'xx' correspond to the numbers on the back of the computer.
If the contents have been corrupted, (sometimes they are reset to 'ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff'.) open a shell and type:
dump -w -x 0xbfbe04e8
Check the output here to see if it matches the address given in any 'ec0: bad ethernet address' error message. If not, you may not want to overwrite the current NVRAM address.
Scripts to reset the ethernet address in the NVRAM chip are available at Squirrel.com for different SGI computers. Alternatively, it has been reported that you can do the following:
fill -w -v 0xGG 0xbfbe04e8 fill -w -v 0xHH 0xbfbe04ec fill -w -v 0xII 0xbfbe04f0 fill -w -v 0xJJ 0xbfbe04f4 fill -w -v 0xKK 0xbfbe04f8 fill -w -v 0xLL 0xbfbe04fc
Where GG:HH:II:JJ:KK:LL is the ethernet address shown on the label on the back of the Indy.
To restart the system, either power down, wait one full minute then power up. Alternatively, if the battery is flat and can not be replaced, you can restart the system using the new NVRAM settings by first typing 'init 6' within the PROM monitor, then 'single', which starts single user mode. At this point, the command 'nvram eaddr' will show the correct MAC address and IRIX can be restarted by typing 'init 3'.