I recently resurected an old P3/440BX sys that originally had an ISA sound card with Win '98 installed, mainly for something to do and to have a spare web/e-mail sys.

I installed  XP and as we all know, XP does not support ISA.
So I got a one of the thumb drive size, USB sound soulutions that just has  output and MIC jacks.
I  figured it woud be a easy install since they do not need drivers.

I was not  expecting too much but was pleasently surprised.
Of course XP reconized it and all its features at once.
However, I was surprise by the sound.

Of course, it does not have all the features of a dedicated sound card or MOBO chip but, it plays MP3s and other sounds with pleasing enough quality for my purposes

But what really surpried me was the MIDI support. It  sounds about as good as my other systems with either modern MOBO sound or dedicated sound cards.
BTW, I acually like MIDIs files (and have quite a collection)  as there are some very good ones out there.

Anyway,  if anyone is considereing getting one for  a laptop, legacy sys or whatever, they actually do work suprisingly well and definately worth $3.