The Computer History Museum has a nice two-part oral history of Bob Metcalf (3Com founder and co-inventor of Ethernet) back in 2006: https://youtube.com/watch?v=zKz07DdaKzw

For those with textual proclivities: https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_Hist...

Metcalfe has a reputation for being brash and outspoken and it clearly shows in the interview. I think it served him well in business and later in life as a pundit. I remember looking forward to his columns in InfoWorld, though I didn't necessarily give much stock to his predictions.

He talks a little bit about the downfall of 3Com in the interview, though he begs-off of talking about things that happened there after he left.

I very much enjoyed the trivia and minutiae about the creation of Ethernet and the Digital / Intel / Xerox relationship that ultimately resulted in it being standardized.

Basically, it was a long listen but there was some good stuff in there.

(2022) Yeah.. I know, it says 2026 at the top, but it was posted here in 2025, and you can see it's older. No idea why the author keeps ever-greening (the create date should at least reflect the original post?)

(Small text changes, and a CTA at the bottom)

https://web.archive.org/web/20220302141059/https://dfarq.hom...

I am sure that the built-in Intel Ethernet ports on most motherboards have made Network Cards obsolete at least for the Home Market. When I got a 2Wire DSL modem, they threw in an Intel Ethernet card with it for free. Now I use WIFI 6 on my Wifi router and PC, and it is fast enough for me.

I remember when USRobotics was giving away free 56Kbps modems to BBSes if the SYSOP listed that they had a USRobotics modem and kept the BBS up for 24 hours a day.

Quite a long winded way of saying: bits of HP(E).

I can't quite remember if the 3c509, 595 or 905 was the fastest and best. I think 905. I created a boot disc for these and a few other NICs that featured on Novell's Cool Solutions.

Nowadays I have QSFP28+ to fiddle with.