Help identifying unusual front panel connectors on motherboard

martyp

Hi all,

I'm really hoping someone here might be able to help me with this.

Basically, I fitted a new motherboard to an old Packard Bell PC and the wires from the front panel were connected as follows and go to the front panel in pairs as such:
White (FP But IN) & Black (Ground) - Power button
Blue (HDR Blink Green) & Green (HDR Blink Yellow) -???
Yellow (HD PWR) & Brown (HDA) -???

The case has a power button which was the easy bit to wire up, what I have no idea about is what the other four wires are for and what they match up to on the new motherboard (it has a separate IDE HDD LED connector on the motherboard which is two pins - (+ and -))

I've read various things on the net and am thinking that in some way those other four wires would connect to the IDE LED pins and the Power LED pins (PLED and +5v).

I just have no idea which is which...

pcombo

try reading the motherboard manual.

turbobob

Well you got the important one with the power switch..

Basically if the other wires are for the Power and HD activity LED's then two of the wires need to connect to the appropriate ground pins and two of them to +5v. Without both a +5v input and a connection to ground, the LED will not light. Nothing more complicated than that. The non-standard labelling on the wires is the confusing bit.

My guess would be the "blink" wires are the ground connections and the others are for connecting to 5v. Or it could be the other way round. Presumably green is the power LED and yellow is the HD activity LED.

martyp

pcombo wrote: »

try reading the motherboard manual.

Nice idea - I would do that if it was possible but the PC is a Packard Bell and doesn't have a motherboard manual and one isn't available on the net, the only info is very basic on their website and doesn't really explain the pin out in line with more standard layouts

martyp

Many thanks turbobob, I think I may have sorted it as both LEDs are now working as they should and no smoke as yet

Here is the final result:

FP BUT In (white) -> PWR (ATX Power Switch)
Ground (black) -> Ground (ATX Power Switch)

HDR Blink Green (blue) -> PLED (Power LED)
HDR Blink Yellow (green) -> +5v (Power LED)

HD PWR (yellow) -> IDE_LED1 (+)
HDA (brown) -> IDE LED1 (-)

This is the pin layouts in pictorial form - the old motherboard picture is all the info available on this topic on the Packard Bell site (doesn't really explain the wiring!):

pcombo

You said you bought a new motherboard you will get a manual regardless of the make of the pc.

martyp

pcombo wrote: »

You said you bought a new motherboard you will get a manual regardless of the make of the pc.

Just to clarify, the PC is a 2001 Packard Bell model which was bought in a sale or something by my gf's parents many years ago and as far as I'm aware didn't come with any kind of manual, at least nothing technical.
The new motherboard is an OEM one purchased as 'New' from eBay. Being OEM it didn't come with manual, drivers, cables etc or even backplate...
The manual for that board however was still possible to find after googling. The main problem was understanding the Packard Bell wiring arrangement from the front panel which didn't seem to match any info I could find on the net...
Old motherboard was in a Packard Bell iMedia 5118, called a Cosmos, made by Gigabyte (no manual on their site)
New one is a p4s533-vm made by Asus.
If I had the manuals and technical data available it would have made things a lot easier. I even tried contacting Packard Bell, who although friendly, were like many 'tech support' departments which lack true tech knowledge of the PC hardware, more so how to create a Word document or do a system restore... (also like the Dell tech support who asked me to boot a new laptop with a cracked screen into Windows to see if the crack in the screen disappeared!)