I have a Shuttle PC that has USB 1 on the motherboard so I bought a USB 2 card for the PCI slot. This card has a single internal USB port as well as the external ones.. My question is, this PC has 2 ports in the front of the case hooked to the motherboard by a 10 wire ribbon cable (hard drive style only smaller) Is there any way to get or make an adapter to plug these ports into this internal slot and get usb 2 in the front ports?? Or would this not work? Thanks!

You would need to figure out what 4 pins in that connector go to the USB ports, and somehow splice those off to the internal card. They should be the same signal, but the definite source is going to be the motherboard manual. For Shuttle XPC boxes, the motherboard is usually an FNxx part matching the case it came in. So if you have an SN51G system, the motherboard would be an FN51. Search Shuttles site for it, as it should have the pinout of that 10 pin header.

Thank you Darkino I will check that out..

Ok I have found the pin out for the connector.. Im not to familar with the way USB cables are wired up so could someone kinda tell me how to use this pinout into a single usb connector to plug into my pci usb port? The port in the front is dual. (SV25 is the model) Thanks!

That header provides two separate USB buses, one for each port on the front. You imply that your new USB2 card has only one internal bus. If you want to hook both ports up, you'll either need a second internal bus (probably yet another card), an internal hub of some nature (probably not the most practical idea), or hook one of the ports up to the new USB2 card and hook the other to the existing header.

Since you need to chop your current cable or create an adapter of some nature anyway, I'd go with the latter.

USB is four connectors, 5V, Ground, Data+, and Data-. Your header presents one port on the odd-numbered pins, and the other on the even-numbered pins, both with an extra ground for some reason.

I don't know the best way to connect what you've got now. In the best world, you could have a new header with wires coming off of it to which you could attach new connectors and plug in the existing connector, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find such a thing. Alternately, you could pry open the connector you have now to free the existing cable and attach new connectors to the old cable directly. You might even be able to, if you're careful, put one of the existing pairs back in the connector and reattach it to the motherboard.

Best bet is to find a different USB2 card, one that has a matching 10-pin internal header. I have a spare one here, but shipping would be murder.

Cheers

So if i understand you correctly using the single internal port I can only plug in 1 of the front ports, if I were to get one of those laptop usb adapters that takes a single port to 2-4 ports could I then splice that cable into 2 usb plugs and plug in to that mini usb hub to get both working? Thank you all for your help with this...

Yes. You could do that, as long as you were okay with having a USB hub (or, as you put it, "laptop usb adapter" ?!) floating around inside your case.

Mark's right, though. Your best bet would be to find a card that had the appropriate internal pinout on it.

I will look around and see if I can find a card with that connector on it and if its cheap enough considering i just bought this card not too long ago but cant return it I may get it or just try the more difficult way Thanks again for all the help!