Hi,
yeah those hubs are nice and I fear I shall buy one if all my other attempts fail... it's just my "policy" LOL, I just hate having too many hardware and things hanging around (the rear mounting hub without wires is nice though, thanks for the link), and where possible I always opt for internal stuff.

As for the card u pointed out, I checked the picture and it looks like it's a VIA chipset. I suspect it won't work well with MOS. The other spare USB VIA card I mentioned previously had troubles in the Peg. I mean, it is recognized by Poseidon but I experienced some strange issues, like devices self-dismounting while transferring data etc

Let'see... a friend just offered to send me his card who he says it works on his Mac...

Anyway, the non working NEC card I just bought mounts a NEC D720101F1 chip... but perhaps it's not even the chip causing troubles but the onboard logic or something else... or perhaps it's double slit PCI cards which aren't compatible with Macs for some reasons (honestly I searched online for hints before buying my card but I couldn't find anything useful, other than a thread where they suggested to keep off VIA and to go for NEC always, when it's about Macs)