[Technical tips] Finding your MAC Address on the Vortex86 Platform

A media access control address (MAC address) is a unique identifier assigned to a network interface controller (NIC) for use as a network address in communications within a network segment. MAC addresses are recognizable as six groups of two hexadecimal digits, separated by hyphens, colons, or without a separator.

For debugging, users may need to check the MAC address before the Operating System has been installed.

There are two instances where users may need to debug:
1. MAC address has a conflict issue.
2. MAC address is not installed for some reason.

How to identify and check MAC address

• DOS: Use the utility program provided by the vendor.
• Linux/Unix: type

  ifconfig -a

  . You must be root user or have appropriate permissions.
• Windows: In the command prompt (CMD), type in

  getmac

  (or

  getmac /v /fo list

  for full info).

[DOS] Checking MAC address of R6040/RTL8111F

To find the MAC address of R6040/RTL8111F in the BIOS on the Vortex86 platform, please follow these steps. (The example below is based on VDX3-6755.)

1. Please put the network driver (we use CHECKMAC.exe in this example) into a bootable drive.
   (CHECKMAC.exe is an internal testing tool, please search on Google and type “Checking dos network driver”)
2. Power up the device and boot into the bootable drive.
3. Execute

   CHECKMAC

   As shown below, you will find two MAC addresses:
   
   • 00:1B:EB:49:E2:34: Assigned for R6040.
   • 00:1B:EB:68:FD:DD: Assigned for RTL8111F.