Non-PC Geeks

So, we’ve been living with the ATX motherboard specification for what? 10? 12 years now? This specification lays out things like size of the board, placement and size of the slots, the power supply connection and ratings and such to the motherboard, location of the screw down mounts and so forth. The one thing that they did not standardize though is the connections for all the various front panel hookups.

If you’re somebody who builds your own PC’s, or builds them for others, you no doubt dread that part of installing a motherboard more than any other. Inevitably, it always seems like no two motherboards have the pins in the same place, or grouped together the same way. Worse yet, it often happens that the connectors from the case either aren’t labeled the same way, or the pinouts don’t totally match (like the MB has spot for 2 pins, but the case connector uses a 3 pin connector with 2 wires in it, in the wrong spots.)

Worse yet, some of the connections are orientation important, while others can get plugged in either orientation. How many of us have gone through the process of building our own machine, spending hours putting everything together just to find we have the dreaded “HD light” always on (usually because we plugged the connector in backwards) ?

I really have to ask, why the heck can Intel/AMD and everyone else who’s part of the ATX specification group release an addendum that requires all motherboards and cases to use a single common connector pinout? If the case doesn’t support intrusion detection, just don’t hook wires to those pins of the connector on the case. Or if the motherboard doesn’t support that feature, just don’t provide the pins or traces on the board.

These aren’t the only connectors that currently arent’ 100% standardized between motherboards and cases. For instance, many modern motherboards have pins to hook up front port audio jacks to the on-board sound. Likewise, internal Firewire connectors are rarely standardized, and so the case manufacturers tend to provide each pin as a seperate connector, forcing the user to plug in 8-10 tiny single pin connectors in just the right order. And you better get it right or you risk sending power to the wrong pin and frying that nice $1000+ video camera you bought and hooked up!

We won’t even get into the issues of these pins being WAY too small for your average geek with big hands to work with in a cramped computer case, under a desk in horrible lighting…

Some motherboard manufacturers are starting to get it and are attempting to provide solutions. The last motherboard I bought (Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe) came with little connector blocks for the internal USB and FireWire connectors. With these, you simply hooked the pins from the case connectors onto the adaptor block (a lot easier than trying to do it on the motherboard) and then just plugged the block into the motherboard. Unfortunately, they didn’t include one for the internal sound pins.

In short, this is a simple, tiny, cheap problem to solve that would make it a LOT easier to build systems. Why hasn’t anyone fixed it yet? And why isn’t this being addressed in newer specs like BTX or the new spec that AMD put out for small machines? Am I the only one that finds this frustrating and rediculous?

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