[3c509-bug] Is this a hardware bug or a software one?

[adam@iboogie.tv]

"Auto-sense" on 3c905 cards (the default) for selecting between 10bvaseTX and 100baseTX
NEVER EVER works in a 10Mbps environment, and causes precisely the same appalling behaviour under
winNT 4, win2k, and linux 2.4.18 (I've seen this in many offices now and got used to telling
people they just need to manually set 10base or 100base and all will be well).

You can generally download form the affected card/server fine, with sometimes a small decrease in speed.

Uploads are limited to 2-10kbps (Yes! That's kbps not mbps!).

Is this a bug in the drivers (not doing auto-sense properly) or is it somethign wrong with the cards themselves? I've worked with a few other tech support/network admins who have been divided
on whether it is a problem at:

 - hub/switch
 - NIC
 - driver
 - OS

But as I've seen it on multiple OS's and multiple different switches/hubs from different vendors, with only the 3com NIC's being the same, it seem to me to be a hardware problem?

Adam