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.

I remember also original EtherLink 3C501 and 3C505 with 3+Share yay!

Both were quite exiting and beautiful looking new fancy cards early -85 when I first had them on my desk. But in reality 501 was a dumb as a dodo and 505 with its dedicated 80186 (co)processor for 3+Share fileserver intended use not much better.

Here are links to pictures of those wonders we got -80 and cursed them later :)

  https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/3com-etherlink-3c501-assy-1248

  https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/3com-etherlink-plus-3c505b-assy-2012

I bought a 3c595 FastEtherlink card from CompUSA when I was in college because my dorm had ethernet and I was running FreeBSD and I thought tech specs were the be-all end-all.

It was fast, but not noticeably faster than any other cards my friends had. Except I spent way too much on mine.

3c509 was 10base-T ISA, so it's the slowest. 3c595 and 3c905 are 10/100 PCI cards, but the 905 was newer and more efficient (better bus mastering, more CPU offload)