USB expansion card - no go

Ironically enough after building my own servo and stepper cards I purchased a completed USB expansion card from OC...only to find I can't get that card to work. It's just dead. Ensured power, plug into usb and nothing. Computer doesn't acknowledge a card's plugged. LED on card never even flickers...no sign of life. So I play around with different USB cables and ports...nothing. Give up, let it sit a week. Try again...nothing. So I start playing with the power connection...nothing. But then I accidentally connected the power plug backwards and quickly unplugged it as magic smoke was generated. So I may have just cooked that card for good. Well, I guess it's still not working any better than it did before.

Considering I only need one MasterCard I don't need the USB expansion...just thought connecting via USB would be easier. So I'm planning on getting a parallel port card for my PC and just skip the USB expansion.

Anyone with similar experiences? Is it worth the effort to see what OC has to say about the nonfunctioning card or should I just cut my loses and forget it?

OK I figured it out. After posting this I decided to try something. I hooked up everything and still dead. Windows wasn't even recognizing when I'd plug/unplug the USB. I reconnected everything and went into Device Manager. There I saw an "Unknown USB Device". Clicked on it and let windows automatically install the drivers. Bingo...it's up and running now. Guess I put too much reliance on windows auto-detecting. Still kind of odd that windows didn't pop up the "Unknown USB Device" message upon plugging the card in.