They aren’t new technology but they do change in how they do things, and most importantly in how the OS accesses them. Heck there’s been at least one MAJOR change in network cards in the last seven years, that being that they frequently AREN’T cards any more. Most network cards now are integral to the motherboard, that would probably seriously change how the OS accesses the card which could be inhibiting XP.
We KNOW XP and Vista and every other MS OS does indeed ship with generic network card drivers. But apparently XPs 7 year old generic network card drivers didn’t like this one. Don’t expand a problem with 1 card into an overall lack, especially when that overall lack doesn’t exist.
Nope. Even integrated Ethernet uses exactly the same protocols to work as the old 10Base-2 cards. The only difference is that instead of sitting on a card, the chip is on the mobo. They work exactly the same way.
Did you miss my post above about how I booted brand new hardware with a Linux OS from 2002 and everything worked?