3Com 3C574-TX Fast EtherLink 16-Bit 10/100BASE-TX PCMCIA PC Card w/ Dongle

3Com 3C574-TX Fast EtherLink 16-Bit 10/100BASE-TX PCMCIA PC Card w/ Dongle

The 3Com 3C574-TX Fast EtherLink is a 16-bit PCMCIA Type II PC Card that adds 10/100BASE-TX wired Ethernet connectivity to laptops equipped with a PCMCIA or PC Card slot. It connects via a short proprietary dongle cable that breaks out to a standard RJ-45 port. This unit is an OEM version and includes the dongle cable.

Specifications & What's Included

• Model: 3Com 3C574-TX Fast EtherLink
• Part Number: 16-0096-000, Rev A
• Form Factor: PCMCIA Type II, 16-bit PC Card
• Network Speed: 10/100 Mbps (10/100BASE-TX)
• Interface: PCMCIA 2.0/2.1 / PC Card Standard
• Connector: Proprietary dongle → RJ-45
• Compliance: FCC Class B, CE, ICES-003, VCCI
• Country of Manufacture: USA
• Includes: PCMCIA card + RJ-45 dongle cable
• Does not include: retail packaging or driver CD

Applications

The 3C574-TX was designed for laptops from the mid-to-late 1990s and early 2000s that lacked built-in Ethernet — a common situation before wired networking became standard on portable computers. It works in any laptop or sub-notebook with a Type II PCMCIA (PC Card) slot, which was the dominant laptop expansion standard of that era, found on IBM ThinkPads, Compaq Armadas, Toshiba Satellites, Dell Latitudes, and many others. The card is also useful today for maintaining or connecting older laptops running legacy operating systems that have native 3Com driver support. PCMCIA Ethernet cards like this are still sought after for retro computing setups and for connecting vintage laptops to modern networks.