Travel Technology - USB Pinouts

I'm putting together a computer for my daughter out of bits and pieces I have collected over the years. I have a nice old Pentium motherboard and all the other stuff I need. Since she'll just be using it for web surfing and maybe a little Office stuff, it should work out just fine.

On the MB is a connector for USB (no doubt USB1.1, but that'll work just fine). I know they sell port extenders so you can bring it out the back, but I'm wondering ...

The port on the board is a 10-pin job (2X5). Is that a standard? Are/were there any standards back then (maybe 5 years ago)? It's not a big deal, but I suspect at that time each MB manufacturer used whatever he pleased. Hate to spend a lot of time messing around with it if I'm never going to get anywhere.

I think the best solution is if you can find the make and model of that motherboard. The vast majority of computer component manufacturers have good websites that will include things like the manuals for past products. In my (limited) experience, many of the motherboard manufacturer's manuals or online support will contain the information you're looking for.

I don't think there's any standard, at least not any that's well known. The pinouts shouldn't be all that hard to find.

FewMiles..

I'm putting together a computer for my daughter out of bits and pieces I have collected over the years. I have a nice old Pentium motherboard and all the other stuff I need. Since she'll just be using it for web surfing and maybe a little Office stuff, it should work out just fine.

On the MB is a connector for USB (no doubt USB1.1, but that'll work just fine). I know they sell port extenders so you can bring it out the back, but I'm wondering ...

The port on the board is a 10-pin job (2X5). Is that a standard? Are/were there any standards back then (maybe 5 years ago)? It's not a big deal, but I suspect at that time each MB manufacturer used whatever he pleased. Hate to spend a lot of time messing around with it if I'm never going to get anywhere.


If you have a spare PCI slot, I say forget about the mother board, and for under $20 you can get a usb pci card with five ports on it and they will be 2.0. www.cyberguys.com has one for $19 or so.

i have a little doohickey for my ASUS mobo that has a 2x5 pin female connector for those 10 pin mobo connection on one end, and two usb slots mounted on a PCI slot guide (i don't know what to call those L-shaped things). if you think that'll work you can have it. PM me.

The most common pinout for the 2x5 motherboard connector consists of 2 rows of 4 (+1) pins, one row per port:

- pin 1: +5V
- pin 2: -data
- pin 3: +data
- pin 4: ground
- pin 5, if any: not connected / physical key for 4+5 connector, etc.


Some prehistoric motherboards (~5 years old) I have seen did not follow that layout.

Did this same thing while repairing/rebuilding an old Dell Pentium II/400. Spent all of $9.99 at Fry's Electronics (okay, it was on sale) for a PCI USB card.

Machine now has a USB 2.0 port, and the install disk worked under Win 98 SE (hey - I SAID it was an old machine.)

Installation was a bit funky in that you had to install the drivers before installing the board, but it worked well the second time. Board and USB port work perfectly.

Funny that oldandslow mentioned the word fry.

While trying something not too different from what you're wanting to do, a technician thought that he had the right pin-outs and stuck my 128mb stick into the USB. No reaction from the PC, no 'new hardware found'. We pulled the stick out and, lo and behold, we smelled something not too different from the smell of a burnt match. Hence, the word fry. :(

Moral of the story: I'd spend the couple of bucks for the PCI USB card.