Three Soundcards - No, you must be kidding?

Well, today has been a rather perplexing day.

I've been making a digital mode interface for my FT-857; I want to let it sit here in the shack WSPR'ing away. For WSPR see:

http://wsprnet.org

So the construction of the interface was very simple, I used some of the building blocks here, this is a great site run by Ernie, WM2U:

http://www.qsl.net/wm2u/

And the interface looks like this:

So, the Windows 7 PC I have here (It Runs Win 7 Ultimate), has on-board sound which is interfaced to my digital modes box which switches between my FT-847, FT-950 and FT-2000:

http://g0mgx.blogspot.com/2011/10/how-come-its-siuch-damn-mess-again.html

Then there is a high spec PC soundcard which is used for the SDR receiver:

http://g0mgx.blogspot.com/2011/10/its-done-no-really-its-done.html

And now (as you will see from the photo above) I am planning to use a USB soundcard for interfacing to the FT-857 I have here.

All was going great, the soundard installed fine, I was receiving WSPR on 20M, I tried the PTT circuit which was also working great. Then I put the software into TX and everything stopped after about a ms of audio out. I then spotted that the USB soundcard was red hot.... I happened to have two of these USB devices, so I tried the other one. That one got even hotter.....

I guess this is what you can expect from an ebay purchase that cost me something like £1.20 including delivery.

You live and learn... I need an alternative third soundcard.

I'll keep you posted.

Fun, egh?