[LAU] Midi problems with audiophile 2496

Looking for some suggestions here. I've had a Maudio 2496 card for a few years. Works fine for audio, but if I use an the external midi ports it cause random freezes to my system. Only solution at this point is to hit the <RESET> button. Not much fun. Right now I'm using Ubuntu with the 2.6.20-16-lowlatency kernel and alsa 1.0.14rc1. What is interesting is that I had the same problems when I first installed the card and was running a kernel much older and Mandrake. Checking some of the alsa mailing lists I found a discussion about this dating back to 2004 ... so I'm assuming that whatever the problem was ... it's been fixed? Nope. For the past few years I've been using a usb-midi thingie, and that does work fine. But, I'm running out of USB ports, and I'd like to dedicate the usb-midi thing to my laptop. So, I tired the 2496 again ... same problem. So, should I just forget about the 2496 and buy yet-another-card? Do something creative with the usb port situation? Or does someone know a simple solution for the 2496 problem. Thanks. -- Bob van der Poel ** Wynndel, British Columbia, CANADA ** EMAIL: bob(a)mellowood.ca WWW: http://www.mellowood.ca