Front panel connectors

[pagemastr]

Hi all!
I am replacing a motherboard in a proprietary case. The front panel connector for this case is one piece and has no chance of being the same as the front panel connector on the motherboard I am putting in.
I am looking for the small square pin connectors (approx 2mm square) that connect the power, reset, speaker connections etc. to the motherboard. The same ones are also used to connect USB and 1394 plugs to the motherboard. Any help for a supplier or a workaround would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
Jack C.
:frown:

 

[DerwenArtos12]

they aren't very often 2mm square. the power button is a small 2 pin connector and the power led is 2 pins with a blank between. the hdd light and reset button are also 2 pins actually. most new, if not all, have the same pin layout so i don't see how the one for whatever motherboard you have should be different. if you could supply a picture that would be very helpful.

 

[Zepper]

The header pins are on 0.10" centers which would make the individual plastic shells 0.1" (or approx. 2.5 mm) square. On most of the connectors you should be able to extract the contacts and rearrange them to suit the new header pin sequence. If you can find no way to extract the contacts, then you can get .1", two row header shells for any multiple of pins and contacts from places like jameco.com, allelectronics.com, dalco.com, digikey.com or bgmicro.com. I haven't seen the single pin shells sold separately, but you might check cyberguys.com or startech.com.
.bh.

 

[Slogun]

Yes, proprietary connectors (such as found on Dells) are a pain when time to upgrade.

I pulled a bunch of wires and connectors from old junked comps for such needs.

As, Zepper, said, you can carefully extract the wires and reconfigure. You can probably pick up some type of cables for a buck or so at compusa, microcenter or even radio shack and then cannibalize the connector.

Also, be aware that late 90's era Dells, if that's what you are upgrading, also had proprietary PSU's and PSU connectors which will fry a new mobo.