@dinhngtu Thanks for fixing the note.
The IP loss did happen on 9.6.0. On the first boot after I set has-vendor-device=false, the guest still reported tools 9.6.0 build 19 (xenbus 9.1.13.23, xenvif 9.1.15.8, xennet 9.1.8.6), and both static IPs were already gone: the main NIC was on DHCP and the second NIC had a 169.254 address. XenClean and the 9.2.385 install came after that.