Front panel USB Problems
Background:
My dad has a Compaq Presario 7110US and has an 8GB USB drive to back up all of his data, his only problem is the speed of the ports on the front of his computer. So I suggest he gets a USB2.0 PCI card and then we can get a cable to attach to the front panel USB ports. After figuring out yesterday that the motherboard is proprietary (of course I expected this from Compaq) and I was unable to find any type of documentation for the motherboard. So today I broke out my multimeter and the front panel ports I figured out the correct pinout for the headers on the little front panel circuit board. Since I already have a USB2.0 PCI card and a cable to connect an internal media card reader I took those devices out of my computer and put them in his to test all of this before I have him purchase anything. I was only able to wire up one of the ports after adjusting the cable.
Now to the problem:
I hooked the front panel back up and plugged it into the internal port of the PCI card. When I plug in a flash drive it does not read it at all. If I unplug the cable on the inside and plug it intot he bac of the computer, so that the front panel is connected to USB1.0 it works fine. The only things that work when the front panel is connected to the internal PCI card are his wireless mouse and the printer (did test pages on both the 2.0 adn 1.0 interfaces through the front panel). The only thing that I can think of that is happening is that it's not getting enough current to drive the device through the 2.0 interface, which then confuses me because it works fine through the 1.0 interface.
Sorry for the long post, but does anyone have any ideas? Do I maybe have to make sure both of the front panel ports are wired up? I was only able to wire one of them because of the cable I have and the fact that my PCI card only has one internal USB port.
I do have my header USB cable just attached to a ribbon cable that was already being used with the panel. Not sure if this is maybe causing the issue but I had to use it because of gender issues.
My dad has a Compaq Presario 7110US and has an 8GB USB drive to back up all of his data, his only problem is the speed of the ports on the front of his computer. So I suggest he gets a USB2.0 PCI card and then we can get a cable to attach to the front panel USB ports. After figuring out yesterday that the motherboard is proprietary (of course I expected this from Compaq) and I was unable to find any type of documentation for the motherboard. So today I broke out my multimeter and the front panel ports I figured out the correct pinout for the headers on the little front panel circuit board. Since I already have a USB2.0 PCI card and a cable to connect an internal media card reader I took those devices out of my computer and put them in his to test all of this before I have him purchase anything. I was only able to wire up one of the ports after adjusting the cable.
Now to the problem:
I hooked the front panel back up and plugged it into the internal port of the PCI card. When I plug in a flash drive it does not read it at all. If I unplug the cable on the inside and plug it intot he bac of the computer, so that the front panel is connected to USB1.0 it works fine. The only things that work when the front panel is connected to the internal PCI card are his wireless mouse and the printer (did test pages on both the 2.0 adn 1.0 interfaces through the front panel). The only thing that I can think of that is happening is that it's not getting enough current to drive the device through the 2.0 interface, which then confuses me because it works fine through the 1.0 interface.
Sorry for the long post, but does anyone have any ideas? Do I maybe have to make sure both of the front panel ports are wired up? I was only able to wire one of them because of the cable I have and the fact that my PCI card only has one internal USB port.
I do have my header USB cable just attached to a ribbon cable that was already being used with the panel. Not sure if this is maybe causing the issue but I had to use it because of gender issues.
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Comments
I'm starting to think that the front mount panel isn't USB2.0 compatible itself, which would then leave the only option of running a cable around to the front of the case.
Anyone else have any ideas?
Edit: Could this be a problem with the fact that I have a ribbon cable in the mix? I think I had reasd somewhere that shielding of the cables matters when you're running at USB2.0 speeds. I didn't have a cable with the right gender to run right from the internal USB2.0 cards port to the front mount panel so I had to use the ribbon cable.
I think you hit the nail on the head.. a lot of older cases simply are not USB 2.0 compatible on the front panel. I'm not sure the ribbon cable makes a difference (most dell optiplex models have ribbon USB 2.0 to the front panel), but more likely some kind of wiring, grounding, or other problem. I know on my Antec, it connected to a mini circuit board that had some capacitors on it. I suspected those were to blame.
Best of luck!