I worked at 3Com in the mid 1980's. We had a smart guy (Stanford grad) working in manufacturing that was doing numerical analysis on failure rates and product returns. His analysis showed that the 3c50x PC Ethernet cards almost never failed and built a case for offering a lifetime warranty. He calculated that it would cost the company almost nothing to offer the warranty.
They were high-quality cards and the lifetime warranty proved to be very popular.
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
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.
3com was the very first investment I ever bought…I bought my shares on Thursday October 15th, 1987….those that are old enough to remember will know how that turned out.
I can maybe do you one better. I think my first investment was 140 shares of LNUX at F&F IPO pricing of $30/share, purchased Dec, 1999. It opened at $299/share the day of the IPO. Should've sold that day. Eventually sold it all in 2004 for $2.80/share.
(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?)
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.
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.
What happened to them? They never really diversified out of network cards, their cards were very very good, but for most people paying 3x as much wasn't worth it.
They split off their Palm (PalmPilot) division in 2000 to focus on Network equipment. The the .com bust happened.
Palm/Handspring/Treo could have been the iPhone, if they'd been better managed.
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.
> I am sure that the built-in Intel Ethernet ports on most motherboards have made Network Cards obsolete at least for the Home Market.
Someone is still making a NIC chip, they're just selling it to the motherboard OEM, instead of selling an add-in board to the customer (or selling a chip to the add-in maker). In a way, this is more sales, because desktops tend to come with a wired nic and a wireless nic, and so do good laptops.
You are understating how integrated this stuff is. If you make an Intel client motherboard, all you need to add for the network is the phy, jack and some passives.
They were high-quality cards and the lifetime warranty proved to be very popular.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geeknet
(Small text changes, and a CTA at the bottom)
https://web.archive.org/web/20220302141059/https://dfarq.hom...
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.
It was fast, but not noticeably faster than any other cards my friends had. Except I spent way too much on mine.
They split off their Palm (PalmPilot) division in 2000 to focus on Network equipment. The the .com bust happened.
Palm/Handspring/Treo could have been the iPhone, if they'd been better managed.
iPhone wasn't just a form factor, the software traces back to NeXTSTEP 1989.
Fact of the matter is nothing could have been the iPhone, everything sucked in 2007.
Apple had the wind in its back with the iPod and Mac OS X Tiger.
The Intel transition was complete.
Apple was firing on all cylinders, what a time to be in your early 20s.
Even Android did a 180 once the writing was on the wall, it originally resembled BlackBerry OS.
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.
Someone is still making a NIC chip, they're just selling it to the motherboard OEM, instead of selling an add-in board to the customer (or selling a chip to the add-in maker). In a way, this is more sales, because desktops tend to come with a wired nic and a wireless nic, and so do good laptops.