I've been using USB speakers in a Sony Vaio laptop running 1.5_ALPHA2,
till I (or someone else) get a Yamaha DS-1 driver finished.  I've just
started using a Wavelan card.  I notice a significant pause (about
half a second) in playback whenever the Wavelan card is inserted.  I
suspect DELAY() loops somewhere but havent confirmed it.

Has anyone else seen this, or something similar?

I have part-time access to a second Vaio laptop with pseudo-working
PCI soundcard; I can check to see if that behaves the same way. (It
worked fine when I tried it this morning, but I'd just rebooted from
DOS, and I'm not 100% sure the cardbus chip was correctly attached.)