It's not newer hardware. It's ancient hardware.
the only part I dispute is the author and you using newer Linuxes than XP and thinking it has any meaning.
Even though I've pointed out (several times) that older Linuxes see the same "new" hardware just fine.
Then we have you putting stuff on virtual machines and not getting hardware detected. Completely unrelated concepts, lends nothing to the original discussion.
It does show a remarkable consistency of Windows XP (SP3) to not detect an Intel EtherPro chip, regardless of whether it is real or virtual.
Look we had this argument yesterday, you’ve now looped it all back around to the beginning. Look up the answers I already gave. He’s wrong. You’re wrong. The test is BS. We’re done. Bye.