Okay, quick rundown...

I have been using rh9 on my system for a couple of months now, and I am in love so far! BUT, this afternoon when i got home from work, i noticed that my usb mouse was not working ,and my usb modem was lookin dead.
In the end, it turns out it is my usb controller on the motherboard. Luckily, nothing else seems to have a problem. So i run out and pick up a pci usb controller (2.0). I drop it into my system and pray...
and LO and blow holes, its up! Kudzu found it, installed the drivers, and I was up and running before I could blink.
i was a big advocate of using linux on the desktop before. and this latest release of rh9 has still not stopped amazing me every time i use it. incredible. no more floating between linux and win for me anymore. windows is getting formatted away tonight...

btw, the card was a belkin usb 2.0 card. i got it as a blisterpack from my local best buy (desperate times called for desperate measures).
it came with a cd with drivers for windows, but it was absolutely not needed in rh, it was detected and installed lickity-split