In order to make use of the "local-mac-address" property of the
   firmware the driver needs to retrieve the value from the OBP node 
   associated with the device.  But there is no MI way of doing that
   operation.  Since PCI devices, like HME, may be compiled for platforms
   without OFW, like i386, the value of that property is not retrieved.


this is no longer the case for OFW based machines.  netbsd
will honour the local-mac-address? property when it can...


.mrg.