i just found this thing i forgot that i had.
http://www.esi-audio.com/products/midimate2/
ive used it for midi input into a laptop before, but found out that i can use both midi ports as outputs and send midi to a sampler and a synth
next i will try to use midi thru on the sampler to send to a third device. so maybe i dont need the quadra thru just yet.
thanks for the help.