Connecting system reset/power etc plugs.. and a hd Q

[plagiarist]

http://www.muzzleflash.org/cables

So I'm setting up my beautiful new box (I FORGOT TO ORDER A HD, I SWEAR IT WAS ON THE ORDER, I would bet the soul of my grandmother that it was, but it wasn't in the order or on the invoices, and the price was the same as it was when I thought I had the HD, I guess I never had it on, but didn't I copy and paste my shopping cart on here with the HD in the list? Maybe someone filched my HD and added the 88 dollars to the total of my charge..) and the cable colors aren't standard.

I will be able to continue when I know what the different colors mean. IE: if a cable is supposed to be red and black but is pink and white, which one is equivilant to the black? A lot are another color and have white.. I SUSPECT that means something. Once I know that I can connect those cables up. As to the cdrom (EIDE?) that's just a nagging question I have.

I attached the processor and the heatsink + fan (had to remove the stock mounting system to do this but it worked... heatsink is on pretty tight, hope it won't hurt the cpu), and I'm ready to do the rest except the one thing has me a little stymied.. the power and reset stuff. And some from the top flipbox (case has usb ports, firewire, and audio ports on top too). Also I'm not sure on the USB plugs.

Board = Asus A8V deluxe

http://www.muzzleflash.org/cables

click resized to see more reasonable pictures, I left the fullsize for those wanting detail.

apparently I have two little clusters of USB plugs on the mainboard, each two rows wide, I guess that's four USB ports. I have an addon USB card for two USB plugs that would take up one cluster, but for the two plugs on top of the case, it's divided into seperate plugs, I assume they can go one on either cluster or both on one cluster. I had them one on each, and also there were slightly different numbers on each one. Odd.

The firewire for the top plug was seperated into little boxes for each individual wire. I said screw it for that one as the audigy has a builtin firewire and a plug for the mobo that is one single unit.

As for mic and audio plugs on top, I have the audigy in front.

So really it's just for the USB.

As for the reset and power, you can see in the pictures.

I included some of random things that puzzled me although probably eventually I'll figure them out. The cd-rom cable included with the mobo has no protruding ridge like the HD cable (why is the hd cable given more wires if they're both the same?)

Also, since I have no HD and am going back to NY for a bit leaving the pc here making an order of a new hd from newegg within a week or two impossible, is it possible to take my existing HD on my crappy box, remove all the drivers for the motherboard and hardware, and put it in mine?

That way I can keep my registry settings for things like yahoo (meaning the IM logs which are wonky that way) and still have a (slow) HD in it.

I would back up the registry, move the files to the second part of the disk (it's a 60 partitioned to 20 (os and some programs) and 40) and format the small partition and use it except I no longer have my XP PRO disk.


- A frustratedly happy plagiarist who has never built a pc from scratch before but will do fine except for things not clearly documented where he has no experience to guess on.

 

[plagiarist]

PS: The Xaser 3 1000 supertower (one with 7 fans, window) ROCKS.

IT rocks SO. HARD.

I was blown away by this case even after the positive reviews.

I was not prepared for the finish quality of the aluminum.
The ease of the toolless 5" bays.
The nice fan setup.
The overall awesome look.
The free hardcano.
The lock that lets you lock the entire case front and the door, or just the front.
The sneaky little tab to lock the sliding side panel from inside the case front.
The case intrusion alarm.
The LED.
The top ports (although I'll never have more than the USB hooked up, you soundstorm people would like it for the audio jacks).
Everything.

In short, this is an imposing battleship, a muscle car, it is easily worth 250 bucks and you can have it for 130.

GOD it rules. If you are putting together a gaming pc this is an excellent case.

PS: Klipsch speakers smell good. They smell like new, wonderful plasticy hardware.

 

[plagiarist]

any thoughts? I'm really not sure which way is right for the reset switches etc for that front cluster- dunno what's ground and what's not cause the colors are different.

 

[plagiarist]

Grr =/

 

[Gioron]

Power and reset doesn't matter, as long as you make sure you have the two correct pins, you can do it in either order. As long as you're not connecting one of the pins to something like an LED power pin, it'll work either way. The LED connectors are more sensitive, but if you get them wrong it just won't light up, so try it one way and then flip it if it doesn't work.

The protruding edge of the normal HD cable is to make sure you don't insert it backwards. You can do the same thing by leaving one pinhole blank like they did in the CD-ROM cable (if you look closely, you'll see one of the pin sockets is filled in). Its best to use both to ensure the cable is inserted correctly, but you can do just one and get away with it most of the time.

There isn't really a hard standard on how USB sockets on a motherboard should go, but most of the ones I've seen are 10 pin sockets with one pin missing. You don't really need two grounds for USB, its only there to align the connector if you have one with 9 pins instead of two with 5. Hmm, let me download the manual for the board....
Ok, its the same here. I'd plug both of those USB cables into the socket labeled USB56. The pin thats missing is on the ground side of the connector, so put your two connectors flat against each other so that the side with double-grounds are next to each other, and then put them in the socket so that one of the ground sockets is going over an empty pin. Page 2-28 of your manual has the pinout, in case you want to doublecheck.

There also isn't a good standard for motheboard firewire sockets, which is why the firewire plug is divided into single pins. As long as you can get the pinout from the motherboard manual, its possible to hook it up, but very fiddly. Yes, I find that really annoying as well. If you aren't going to pull the motherboard out of the case that often then connecting it might be worthwhile for the added convenience down the line, but otherwise you can just use the firewire port on the SB. If you do connect it, the pinout is on page 2-29 of your manual.

And yes, you can wipe the drivers from a windows install and put an old hard drive in this one, but it tends to cause problems, and often isn't worth the trouble. Windows tends to be picky about sticking to one motherboard in order to run well.

 

[plagiarist]

So basically I can hook everything up in the way I'm most sure is right and if by mischance I'm wrong I won't destroy 400 bucks of ram, processor, and mobo?

Thanks, you freed me from being paralyzed by fear of failure.



I was wondering why I have usb56 and usb78. What's the difference between them?

 

[Gioron]

For some reason I've never inquired about, USB ports like to come in twos, so there are actually two USB ports in each plug. The back panel ports are USB ports 1 through 4 (I assume there are 4 there at least, too lazy to find the manual again). The plug labeled usb56 has ports 5 and 6 on it, and the plug labeled usb78 has ports 7 and 8 on it. The port number doesn't really matter much, its just used for the OS to keep track of what is where.