First up, I think it's the motherboard that went on the old machine; in fact, the motherboard it had was itself a replacement, as the old one died earlier this year (and the shop I bought it from, in December, 2002, had one of the same model around the shop). So I've gone the full-on replacement route, though I'm starting to regret it a bit.
I'm not down totally, though: I installed the latest drivers from Creative, and tried Nomtmad Explorer, and when I plug in the Nomad via USB, Explorer at least gets me the list of WAV files that I know are on it. Notmad isn't fully activated, so I'm waiting on an activation code with fingers crossed.
The Linux Live CD idea sounds good; I'll look into getting one of those burned.
Aloha,
Brad