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I want to transfer some internal peripherals (Wifi card, RF receiver) from my current mo-bo to a new one. Upon inspection it turned out they all have 4-pin internal USB connectors, connected to the board of the card-reader. So the card-reader acts like an USB hub for these devices.

My new mo-bo has no 4-pin internal USB connections, so I tried plugging in the connector onto the right-most part of a normal (9 pin) USB header. This should work in theory, and I made sure the wire colors (red/green/white/black) match the pins, but none of the peripherals work. Some result in 'Unknown device' in Device Manager, and others are not even detected.

Is there a logical reason why the above doesnt work?

EDIT: I just hooked them up on my old mo-bo again, and now they don't function there anymore. So I must have damaged the devices by connecting them in reversed pin order on the new mo-bo. When the connector is upside down, ground and power pins are swapped which must have damaged them.

So this explains why Windows doesnt detect them, and everyone trying the same: be very carefull with connecting internal USB cables!

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Have you ported the drivers over? – Oli Glaser Jun 16 '12 at 18:18
See if you can list the VID/PID for devices, irrespective of drivers (on linux that would be lsusb, you can probably find it in some view of windows device manager). If they aren't showing up there, consider the color codes may not be truly standard. You should be able to determine power/ground carefully with a meter, for D+ and D- experimentally swapping them is probably ok. If you have a harness from each custom connector to a USB "A" you could map that out with an ohm meter. – Chris Stratton Jun 16 '12 at 18:46
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Could you be more descriptive about the connection? "the right-most part" is a bit ambiguous. For that matter, what is "internal (4-pin)" USB? And how is it different than an "external (9-pin)" connection? If I'm understanding correctly, your devices all have 4-pin headers on them that, at one point, connected to the card reader directly (but not board-to-board, just via regular 4-conductor cables). If that is the case, then there should be absolutely no problem connecting these 4 pin cables to either of the 4-pin groups on a 9-pin header. Are you sure you're hooking them up to a USB... – Shamtam Jun 16 '12 at 22:06
...header, and not a USB3.0 header? The USB3.0 pinout is different, and uses all 9 pins. The devices aren't all related to each-other, were they? As in, the wifi card, RF receiver and card-reader, were they all part of one overall package? If they were, it is possible that the card-reader did some of the device management at a lower level, thus these devices must be controlled by the card reader. – Shamtam Jun 16 '12 at 22:08
Apparently, you have wrong pin order. Maybe wire colors are misleading, check the real pin order not just wire colors. I had different pin orders on those 9pin headers on my two older mother boards, and it was described in the board manuals. – Al Kepp Jun 16 '12 at 23:33
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closed as off topic by Kellenjb, Kortuk♦ Jun 17 '12 at 18:20

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