RangeLAN firmware upgrade

[Project Manager]

Hi all,

I have a few old Proxim RangeLAN-DS 8430, originally with f/w 0.7.6 and 
have tried to use two of them for WDS.

The WDS related commands (iwpriv, brctl) run without errors, but both my 
stations freeze punctually in about 20 seconds after the bridging takes 
over.

Thought it might help to upgrade the firmware, so I used ZCOMAX windows 
tools to bump em up to f/w 0.8.3.  Unfortunately prism2_srec complained 
that the manufid is not supported.

This time around one of the hostap's worked fine as before, but the 
other is not able to serve in Managed mode.  It accepts iwconfig 
commands w/o error, but shows AP MAC addr as 44:44:44:44:44:44 (on 
iwconfig wlan0).

I am yet to exhaust my all options for the WDS part, so consider the 
above info fyi for now.  

BUT, does anyone have a clue about what causing the 44:44:44:44:44 :44 MAC?

TIA for your attention.