i found a box full of ethernet cards and i would like to know the good ones to keep. of course the isa is one to keep.
i want to know which are good for DOS and win98.
anyone here knows?
all of them except the realtek, toss teh realtek and test the rest to see which ones work.
The top right one is the fastest 3com card. the top left one has a Boot Lom.
Don't know anything about the top middle one, I'm guessing thats after the broadcom take over and its manufactured on a smaller nm fab. Would be intresting if that makes it faster.
Intel one is solid. I wouldn't toss it. They have better drivers than 3com.
I've got more PCI ethernet cards than I know what to do with, can hardly even give them away it seems.
All of them are pretty good. I'd keep the Realtek one as well since it has broader driver support than the 3com cards.
It hardly takes up any space so I'd keep them all too.
But if I had to choose then I'd choose these two:
Any ISA NIC is useful, I'd keep that.
The 3com 3C905 series are considered the best for retro gaming as they don't take up CPU cycles. They WILL sell if you need some money, not for much but someone will no doubt want them.
A lot of people hate on Realtek. They are cheap and common and eat up CPU cycles but they also support just about any OS you can name and easy to configure. I've got them in a few PCs and do just fine.
At first I thought the Intel one was a Intel Pro 100 which I personally prefer to 3Com but its actually a Compaq NC3120. Probably a fine card but maybe limited to Compaq drivers?
