Via PE11-LA Rev. B USB ports

[Kern]

I'm in the process of doing a "till I can afford better" install of a
the mainboard stated above. However I'm a bit "confused?" about the USB
header ports on the mainboard. There are 2 of them for USB ports 3 &4
and 5 & 6.
Each one of them is a 15 pin connector. Three rows of 5 pins.
I'm used to seeing 9 pin connectors on the mainboard for USB extension.
A connector with 1 row of 5 pins and the next row is 4 pins.

I've tried getting more info from the manual as well a lot of searching
on the Web without success.

Would someone please enlighten me on what it is I'm seeing.

Are these on board USB 2.0 headers? Or just a non standard pinout
for regular USB external access ports?

Thank you. I hope.

[Paul]

The pinout is in the manual. PDF page 30.

http://www.via.com.tw/download/mainboards/3/5/pe11-sa-la_v1.0.pdf

And page 31 gives the rationale. At the time, two formats for the
USB 2x5 connector were considered to exist. You would cover pins 1-10
with one type of cable or plug into pins 6 thru 15 with the other
kind of cable. They provided enough pins, to cover both instances
of USB cabling standards.

If you use the keying pin in the 3x5 area as a hint, that will
tell you how to seat your 2x5. The key on your 2x5 should line up
with the key on the VIA motherboard.

If I look in my current Asus motherboard manual, this is the
pinout table for my connectors.

Pin1 +5V +5V
P9- P10-
P9+ P10+
GND GND
(Key) NC Pin10

Compare that to yours. The "---" are the pins
I'm ignoring. Just plug in your cable, and orient
it so the normal key alignment occurs.

VCC VCC ---
UP2- UP3- ---
UP2+ UP3+ ---
GND GND ---
(Key) GND ---

There are plenty of options for how USBs can be hooked up.
Another curve ball (one not present on your connector), is the
usage of "OC#" on pin 10. You'll notice on my connector pattern,
that pin 10 is NC or "No Connect". Yours includes GND, which can
be used for a shield ground on a shielded cable. Well, some
motherboard headers use "OC#", which is an OverCurrent detection
pin on the Southbridge. If that pin is grounded, the USB port shuts
off. And yet, some cable setups would ground that pin, and cause
an immediate detection of a problem. So there are cabling cases,
where the simply mixing of the wrong kind of cable with the
motherboard, results in no working USB. In your case, there should
be no problem like that.

There are more examples of USB pinouts here, but even this page,
doesn't list all the variations you might find.

http://www.frontx.com/cpx108_2.html

Paul

[Kern]

Paul <nos...@needed.com> wrote in
news:ho68tf$rd3$1...@news.eternal-september.org:

Thanks Paul for your very revealing information. It is much
appreciated. You've provided me with data I needed and I hope
others who might stumble on cases like this.