I have an EtherLink III running in my IBM PC 5150.

Sorry to bump this old thread, but has any1 done any benchmarks/comparisons under pure DOS with several isa cards?

I've run a few on various 3Com chipsets, but not in DOS. Some revisions performed better than others. Re: Differences between 3Com 3c905-tx, 3c905b-tx, 3c905c-tx

feipoa wrote on 2020-12-17, 17:52:

I've run a few on various 3Com chipsets, but not in DOS. Some revisions performed better than others. Re: Differences between 3Com 3c905-tx, 3c905b-tx, 3c905c-tx

Yeah, I saw your thread, but those were PCI cards right? I'm looking for ISA. Your benchmark was cool and useful though, for my Socket 7+ platforms.

I've done some Windows benches with a few different ISA cards, but nothing in DOS. I don't think I published the results on Vogons and they are most likely scattered in pencil in a mess of notes.

feipoa, what PCI chipset was that 3c905 comparison done on?

I've recenty done some tests with a 3C509B (ISA) versus a RLT8019AS (ISA) comparing the troughput on a 486.
The 3C outperformed the Realtek easily.
Tested it with mTCP's FTPSERV tool.

wouldn't mind a test vs intels Pro 10+ in full duplex.

Warlord wrote on 2020-12-17, 20:27:

wouldn't mind a test vs intels Pro 10+ in full duplex.

Even back “in the day”
3com were considered high end but loathed due to major configuration/ setup issues on certain systems.

I always preferred Intel and as strange as it might seem, many organizations like colleges would only allow very specific brands or models on their networks driving home that 3com was needed because it was the only one you could bring.

I was delighted when my college started allowing Intel pro/100b’s on the network.
(Instead of only 3com)

Back then even a shitty 8 bit 3com still cost some cash but oddly was allowed by brand only, so guess what my brand new k6-2 had an 80’s 3com in it because I could afford the card

Etherlink (3c501) & Etherlink II ( 3c503) were poor performers and tough to work with at the best of times. I have a box of them. When it comes to finding something to hold an XTIDE rom, I've considered pulling them out of the box of misfit cards, but it hasn't happened.
Etherlink Plus ( 3c505) might be sort of interesting if you like huge, oddly colored PCBs, but unless you are trying to run Netware 2 or Lan manager on an early 386, why bother.
Etherlink 16 ( 3c507) was usable for DOS, but was a pain to make it work with Win95. Took lots of practice & tweaking in the device properties to get them to work. Seemed more like art than science at the time.
Etherlink III (3c509) ISA was jumperless, and thanks to being sort of plug and play, windows 95 kind of liked it. They performed above the rest because they had a buffer to increase through put and "predictive interrupts" or something like that to reduce the amount of time between packet arrival and packet processing. Maybe a little more finicky than an NE2000 or the SMC at times, but back in the day, it's what I had to work with and it was hard to argue with the ISA performance. I've kept one around for emergencies, but have not used it in years.
Didn't like the PCMCIA Etherlink III adapters. Plug & Play? More like plug and fail!!! And so many lost or busted dongles.
Etherlink 10/100 (3c905) are rock solid with Windows 95/98. It's my goto card for PCI computers that don't have a network card. I have those "wake on lan" cables too. I have plugged in several times, but successfully used them absolutely 0 times because .. It's a neat idea, but when the PC's on the other side of the room .... yeah.
I've never used anything newer than the 3c905.
And these days, CF's make "sneakernet" so easy that I have not bothered to hook up an ISA capable computer to the network in a long time. It's not like you can surf the web any more and my rom burning machine is off line just because the Minipro rom burning software scared the daylights out of me.

Anthing based on realtech chipsets for me on pci systems including wireless networking. On ISA systems I'll use anything as long as there are windows or packet drivers for it. My main go to nics though for isa systems are GeniusLan DE220 series cards. Never failed me.

I like 3COM's 3C509, 3C905, and 3C515 range of adapters for my older systems. I've networked everything I can so that I can perform hdd backups of my older systems and access software directly from my NT server. Otherwise, if the system is fast enough I'll use whatever I have on hand and for which I have drivers for the OS I'm using. I do prefer Intel's cards if I have a choice, especially for my servers. I have an Intel 1Gbit SFP fiber PCI-X card that works great in my dual Pentium III-S! 😁

maxtherabbit wrote on 2020-12-17, 19:32:

feipoa, what PCI chipset was that 3c905 comparison done on?

I think it was on an i430FX.