I cant believe how frickin easy it was this time. I dont think I had mentioned it but I got a new, err um, old card off ebay. After asking the yahoo epods group I went with their advice to use an old US Robotics card. Which was fine by me since it was all of 5 dollars on the bay. So this time I install the prism 2 cab file (from here). Do a soft reset. When the epod boots up it asks for the driver for the new unidentified pcmica card, I enter the prescribed dll name, and thats it. I am looking at the goog. I cant believe I struggled for a week with that other card. Oh well hopefully someone out there with an epod will heed the following words:

JUST SAY NO TO THE DWL-650 FOR YOUR EPOD