Beef up Me Laptop!

[BriSammich]

Greetings! I'm looking for some advice on beefing up my laptop so I can use it for some portable recording and performance applications. I'm currently using Acid Pro and SoundForge for looping, but, I'm held back by my cruddy intergrated soundcard. It has a single stereo output and is impossible to get any kind of clean volume out of. And as far as trying to grab samples...well, they sound muddy and ridiculously low-quality.
Here's what I'd like to be able to do:
I'd like to be able to create good quality wave files/acid loops to use in my home recording.
I'd like to be able to play back high quality loops through a PA at my band's shows.
I'd like to experiment with some of the PC-based synth and rhythm tools that I see advertised...
What can I do to "beef-up" my laptop...(Pentium II, 128 megs of RAM, six gig hard drive, cruddy soundcard)?
I'd be curious to hear the stories of some other laptop users and what you've encountered in both the recording and live settings with your rigs.

 

[ola]

There are both Audio and MIDI interfaces that have USB connections. Unless you have a USB port, I think you're screwed.

 

[j]

if you don't have usb , there are pcmcia cards....the hammerfall dsp looks cool....if you were to have a use for midi, you can use your parallel port.

 

[ola]

There are also docking stations with PCI slots for some laptops but they're far more expensive than a new computer.

 

[BriSammich]

Thanks!

I have 2 USB slots and 2 slots for cards. Will these DSP interfaces take the place of my soundcard or just supplement what I already have?

 

[ola]

You set your recording SW to use the new interface instead of the built in.