reset internal LAN MAC address?

[cogit0]

I just had to replace the system board on my X61 tablet, and have gotten almost everything working. There are still a few things to take care of as part of the system board installation.

In BIOS setup, it reports that the MAC address for the internal LAN is FF:FF:FF:FF:FF. I would think that the MAC address would be set in the firmware for the NIC, so I'm not sure why this NIC is reporting a blank MAC. I know in various operating systems I can manually set it via software, but I shouldn't have to be doing that to get the card to work. Is there a way that I can set the MAC address to be the value that is listed on the stickers that came with the board?

My BIOS Version is 1.22 (2008.11.27).

The other thing I'm trying to work out is using the Thinkpad Hardware Maintenance Diskette (1.75) to set the system type and s/n, but even though I'm booting into the diskette from a USB floppy (after trying bootable CDs and USB drives to no avail), it's still telling me that the EEPROM is write-protected. After being told to hit ESC when the IBM logo shows, there was no difference.

Another slightly off-topic question: how does the type # change depending on the hardware on the system? Looking through the Hardware Maintenance manual, I don't see any differences between the 776x-xxx hardware, system boards and different LCDs included.

[cogit0]

^^^ bump

What reasons would there be for clearing the MAC address from a refurbished system board? How would you be able to set the MAC address again?

[aaa]

An odd problem... I didn't think MACs were erasable like that.

Does the OS also report the bogus MAC? If you're lucky, it has the right one, then I'd just ignore what the bios says.

[cogit0]

I didn't think they were either, which is why it has me weirded out. Every operating system (WinXP, Ubuntu, OSX86) reports the null MAC address.

This mobo has died anyways (see my other post), so I'm going to RMA it and hopefully the new one will have the MAC still on it.