 They are based on a National Semiconductor prototype design using their 8390 Ethernet chip.In the late 1980s, Novell was looking to shed its hardware server business and transform its flagship NetWare product into a PC-based server operating system that was agnostic and independent of the physical network implementation and topology (Novell even referred to NetWare as a NOS, or "network operating system").To do this, Novell needed networking technology in general — and networking cards in particular — to become a commodity, so that the server operating system and protocols would become the differentiating technology.