No problems whatsoever with installing the card in the computer. A minor problem in that there are no Vista drivers available for this old card. If you Google for "Vista Driver CT4780" the first 25 hits are all for people looking for this (non-existant) driver.

Surprisingly the sound card does work (sort of) without the driver, in that it produces noise that if you listen carefully can actually be determined to be speech or music, but it is so over-driven (like running speaker level out into a line level input) that it is practically unintelligible, and from the sound of it no frequencies higher than about 80 Hz are coming out of the card.

So, I guess my "bargain" wasn't such a great deal -- there goes $8.98 down the drain (anybody want to buy a CT4780 sound card at a really good price? ) and I guess I need to shop for something a bit more current and no doubt a lot more expensive.

Specific recommendations? Versatility and high sound quality are not priorities. I mean, it has to sound decent, but it is feeding either a pair of headphones or an $80 Altec powered speaker set (with subwoofer) so it doesn't need to be top of the line by any means. I need utility, not "audiophileness".

So far at least it seems like the computer is happy letting the two sound systems coexist -- sound comes out of whichever output I plug into: either the on-board system which has left channel only and occasional loud pops; or the CT4780 without driver which produces unintelligible sound. I can't find anything in the BIOS that would disable on-board sound.

tanstaafl.