Front Access USB Port wiring?!?

[joshg]

Hey gang, I'm trying to set up two front access USB ports on a system. I'm using an EPoX 8KTA3 Motherboard, which has a header for 2 additional USB ports. The pins are in two rows, labeled 1-5 and 6-10. A cable w/ 2 ports is included in the EPoX package, but using it you have to either 1) have the two additional USB ports on the back of the case, or 2) do some custom modding to put them on the front 🙂

Anyway, according to the manual, this is how the included cord should be connected:


PIN#     Wire color     Signal Name     Comment
-------------------------------------------------------
1        Red            Vcc             Cable Power
2        White          -Data           Data
3        Green          +Data           Data
4        Black          Ground          Cable Ground
5        Black          Ground          Case Ground
6        Black          Ground          Case Ground
7        Black          Ground          Cable Ground
8        Green          +Data           Data
9        White          -Data           Data
10       Red            Vcc             Cable Power
-------------------------------------------------------

Now, I am not wanting to use the included cord because I bought a case that has 2 USB ports on the front, it already has a cord coming from it. With it all of the wires are seperated out individually with their own connectors, the colors are:

Orange
Blue
Yellow
Brown
Gray
Red
Green
White
2 Black

Also, you can view more information about the case here.

The two black wires are the exact same type of wires that the 5 and 6 pin wires (the "Case Ground" ones) on the adapter that comes with the EPoX (they are thicker--more instulation--and have numbers printed on them). Can anyone enlighten me as to which wires go where?!? The case did not come with any manual or anything, it is manufactured by a company named Aspire, http://www.aspireusa.net. They have no support information regarding cases on their whole website, I have emailed them but have yet to receive a reply (it's only been a day, plus it's the weekend, but I don't wanna wait till monday maybe someone here knows?! 🙂 ).

So, can anyone enlighten me as to how these wires should go, which ones on each pin? Thanks, please LMK! 🙂

- Josh

 

[joshg]

OK, I uploaded some pictures to maybe explain a little better (sorry for the webcam, my digital camera is in Mexico right now on vacation, lol).

pic1 - A picture of the USB connector included w/ the EPoX.
pic2 - A closeup of the connector for the EPoX USB connector.
pic3 - A pic of the connector for the USB ports on the case, notice how each wire has it's own single connector.
pic4 - A pic of the header pins from the manual.
pic5 - Another pic from the manual, this is how the pins are actually laid out on the mobo.

Also, the link to the case can be found here. Not much info here though.. 🙁

Someone please help me out with this stuff! Which wires go where? Thanks again!

- Josh

 

[drewski]

Wow. Can't say that I've ever seen USB connectors as ten separate wires before.

Can you tell from the case side how the wires are connected to the actual USB ports on the case? You might be able to deduce which wire should be used for what function.

If you are looking directly at the port from the outside of the case you can see the 4 pins that any peripheral will have to connect to. I've tried a crude ASCII picture here:
----
||||
1234

If you think of the horizontal dashes in the ascii picture as the plastic piece in the middle of the port and the pipes as the connector pins, then the pin's are arranged as follows:
1 - Power
2 - Data -
3 - Data +
4 - Gnd

On one motherboard I have it only has 8 pins on the MoBo, so no "case ground" as you have labeled it connects to the motherboard.

Take this purely as SWAG, but I would try the following under the assumption that one USB port follows the standard wiring color scheme that your Epox connector (and the other external connectors I've used) follows and that the 2nd port is going by the "similar colors for similar functions" methodology. I think, at the very least, you will get one of your USB ports working.
1st 2nd
Power => Red => Orange
Data- => White => Yellow
Data+ => Green => Blue

Sorry, I've writen so much, and am probably not much actual help for you.

edit: wow, those ascii drawings looked better with the mono-spaced font in the reply window.

 

[joshg]

Hi thanks for the reply, the wires are enclosed in an insulation (much like the one for the EPoX connector, it's brown), and at the base where it connects to the port there is a large black plastic cover. I don't know if unscrewing this cover will simply take the USB unit off of the front (there is an included plastic cover with the case if you aren't using the USBs, I'm assuming), or if it actually just takes the cover off exposing where the ports connects to the wires. It's 2 am right now and I have to be up at 7 so I'll check it out tomorrow right after church. Thanks for the input, also!

- Josh

 

[joshg]

OK, I took off the front of the case to see if I could see where each wire was.. whenever I got to the USB connector it was a black casing that read "ACME" on the back. You cannot see which wires are connected to which port.. bummer 🙁

Anyway I've been trial-and-erroring for about an hour now. I've gotten the top port to work, the wiring was simply Red, White, Green, Gray, Black... however I can't seem to get the other port's wiring correct...

Your suggestion of Orange, Yellow, Blue, Brown, Black seemed logical but it did not work. So I've tried in a few different configurations thusfar, none successful yet though 🙁 I do know one thing, if I go Yellow, Blue, Orange, Brown, Black it screws the heck out of my Kyro adapter, and I had to reinstall it. heh.

Also, there is a little splash screen that pops up w/ windows, it's for the Kyro card. Sometimes when I try to plug in the webcam (that's what I'm using to test the port) it will come up with a "New Hardware Found" window, and the Kyro Splash screen also comes up right at the same time, the new hardware it is "finding" always shows up in the Device Manager as "Unknown USB Device", but shows a red X next to it, and says it has been disabled. Hmm.. this has happened with 2 or 3 combinations so far. So folks, am I safe to stick with the Brown and Black on the end (brown as "Cable Ground" and Black as "Case Ground" ?? ). Note it was the Gray cable on the other port that successfully works, that is the "Cable Ground" wire. Someone please help me out this is urgent and I don't know what is going on lol! Too bad I have to shut down the system every single time I want to redo the wiring, unplug the headers, switched around the wires, and plug in again, and then boot up again.. it's taking a lot of time!

Oh well maybe someone will come along and rescue me 🙂.

- Josh

PS, in case any of you may not know the case is a "Turbo Case ATX288K-BK/320" case.. it's actually a really sturdy case, pretty easy to add/remove parts etc, the frame is sturdy, laid out very well for a "cheapo" case 🙂

 

[joshg]

Hi I finally got it using trial-and-error for about 45min, it turned out that the order for the 2nd usb port (in reverse order) is Brown, Yellow, Orange, Blue, Black.. kinda weird eh? 🙂

Thus, anyone using or planning to use/buy a "Turbo Case" model ATX288K or ATX288K-BK/320 etc this is important! Here is a chart showing which wires the USB header pins go to!!

PIN#     Wire color     Signal Name     Comment
-----------------------------------------------------------------
1          Red            Vcc             Cable Power
2          White          -Data           Data
3          Green          +Data           Data
4          Gray           Ground          Cable Ground
5          Black          Ground          Case Ground
6          Black          Ground          Case Ground
7          Blue           Ground          Cable Ground
8          Orange         +Data           Data
9          Yellow         -Data           Data
10         Brown          Vcc             Cable Power
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Also I recommend that after you get them placed in this order, carefully tape them together with electrical tape so it basically "forms" one connector!! Make sure that tape tight so it doesn't come loose either 🙂

Just some helpful info to be had from all my anguish, 😀

- Josh