That must have been later on, as I seem to recall specifically avoiding 3c905 because they emphatically did not Just Work with Linux; I distinctly remember strange network behavior I didn't see with other cards. I think at the time stuff based on DEC Tulip was my choice for reliable 100Mbit Ethernet on Linux.
3c905 emphatically did work on Linux early on (as I remember this .. I was there trying to get Linux on networks ASAP back in the early days and when the 3com hardware launched I helped get the drivers written/tested on both Linux and MSDOS), but what actually happened was 3COM updated their BIOS - in spite of Linux' compatibility - due to bugs in Windows' own driver, and this kept breaking things. There was a low period where variations of the card (-B/-C series) were not supported, but this was rapidly routed around as damage, however, and 3c90x support has always been pretty good on Linux ..
Tulip support was great too, back in the early days, as well as NE2x and so on ..
Interesting, I must have just gotten in at a bad point. Certainly when I was in sysadmin in the 90's and given a 3c905(-probablyB) and told to get it to work I had very little luck.
