I've got both a 5.25 and 3.5 floppy drive on my Linux box at home. I bought the 5.25 drive in the mid-80s as part of my first 'clone kit' (cheap IBM-style PC built completely from components made in Asia). Today I finally unplugged it, even though it still works just fine. I can't even recall the last time I actually used it. I believe I made a Linux emergency boot disk back in 2002, but that was on the 3.5 drive.

I tossed all my old 5.25 disks prior to moving overseas. After much more than ten years in non-controlled temp/humidity environments, there wasn't any 'critical data' left to speak of. Ditto for the 3.5's.

So I've got no disks left to read, and 720kbytes is pathetic and slow storage in 2007.  If you need a copy of something, just flash it to a USB stick.

It certainly wasn't my first floppy drive (that distinction would go to an old 8 inch CP/M drive which I never used because it was obsolete before I ever finished writing the assembly language driver code); - but it's the longest surviving piece of computer hardware I've got at the moment.  Seems a shame to let it go, however what's the point of keeping it running?

This data too shall pass. 

If you're looking for a decent mid-range sound card and don't want to spend a fortune, the ESI Juli@ is pretty respectable. I really like the fact that it's about the cheapest card that'll provide balanced line. You do this by flipping the card around. Unbalanced connectors on one side, balanced on the other. It's a pretty neat concept.

Anyway, if you're trying to install one of these suckers on Vista, forget the installation CD. You can just throw it in the trash if you want. Even though the latest driver is for XP/2005, just go to the website and grab the latest. The driver on the install disk is a piece of crap and you'll be wondering why you bought such a sucky card. Can't even get the basic speaker test sounds to come out without about 300% signal distortion, dropouts, odd harmonics, etc. In short, the sound you get is almost totally unrecognizable.

The website driver makes it actually work.

Oh, and to use with Sonar, don't use the WDM channel. Just go with ASIO.