Mac,
Thanks for the help once again!
I think I have solved the asio prob. I checked the IRQ of the 2496 card and found it was sharing IRQ 19 with 4 OTHER things and noticed that the wireless-G network card was in there on IRQ 20 all by it's lonesome. Sooooo, I swapped PCI slots
between those 2 guys and now the 2496 card is on IRQ 20 all by it's lomesome, and the network card is now sharing IRQ 19 with those other guys.
Bottom line is that all seems to be good now as I checked both the 2496's asio and asio4all and playback now sounds just fine. Except there is some latency or delay in the playback of a couple of the tracks when using asio4all. Would suspect this to be due to a buffer or something that needs to be adjusted for asio4all.
Also solved the 2nd HDD situation and it is working now as well.

Thanks again Mac!
Have a great day!!

Larry