As an aside, I reloaded my system with linux (2.4.27 kernel).  Curiously, it
has this at drivers/net/sunhme.c:2947:

---------------------
        if (pdev->resource[PCI_ROM_RESOURCE].parent == NULL) {
                if (pci_assign_resource(pdev, PCI_ROM_RESOURCE) < 0)
                        goto use_random;
        }
---------------------

Where:

---------------------
use_random:
        /* Sun MAC prefix then 3 random bytes. */
        dev_addr[0] = 0x08;
        dev_addr[1] = 0x00;
        dev_addr[2] = 0x20;
        get_random_bytes(&dev_addr[3], 3);
        return;

---------------------

And yes, the MAC on my eth0 is not what is in the VPD.  Seeing this, I need
to recant my observation that linux "just works" as invalid, technically
speaking.

peter