at cables

[Garebo]

I do registered charity work and put units together for kids that dont have a computer. I have 4 different groups that bring me stuff, along with forum people who are kind enough to ship stuff to me.

As a result, I get lots of parts.
My question is this: I really started learning and building computers about the pentium 2 stage. And of course I have to have a p4 or I dont exist!!! As a result, I am not really clued in on wether I can swap these cables that AT mobos use. In other words, I have a few mobos sitting around that might work but they are missing the mouse ribbon and connector, the parallel port ribbon connector and so on.
Are these items interchangeable from mobo to mobo? Can I use the ps2 mouse port from a dead mobo on another mobo?
Once I get that question answered I have a half dozen of these older mobos that I can get to work on. The ones that came with all the connectors, I fixed them up and out the door long ago. I just have these assortments left. They are old but for a kid who doesnt have a computer, well you should see their eyes light up when I fire it up and show them the games I installed!! Ya, its supposed to be for education, but the games at least get their attention. Of course I put education stuff on them as well. I put a copy of 602 suite on, this way they get to know there is a world outside of m\soft as well!!

I needed the question answered, but if anyone is interested in donating anything at all, please email me at kron123@cogeco.ca. At that point I will explain the details of the registered charity I belong to. We are in dire need of small hard drives, 2 gig to 8.4, but any size will do.
thank you
Please, no thread crapping, if anyone takes offence to anything I say, please email me and let me know. thanks.

[tony_j15]

You should be able to switch the cables. Why don't you try and see what happens? If it doesn't work, then you'll know.

[Garebo]

thats what I have been doing for years. I just thought that someone would come on here and say:

Ok, heres the scoop............................................. ...

And then I would have a nice explanation in laymens terms and away I go, after a thank you.

These forums are full of people with a wealth of knowledge, sooner or later I will get that kind of answer.

In the meantime, well, I think I will try this here and this there, no manual, who cares, I will just plug and pray!!

Only thing is I am left with a few mobos that no-one wants to work on since we only go on guesswork in the area of these type of cables.

[Bovon]

Garebo, my hats off to you for your dedicated time and expertiese working to help others.

For the most part, AT type motherboards did not have PS/2 mouse headers until AT was almost history. The earlier 386/486 and many 586 motherboards did not have a way to use a PS/2 mouse, and all mice were serial port types.

IDE, Floppy drive and Parallel port ribbon cables remain pretty much the same today with the exception of the newer ATA66 on up controllers which require the 80 wire 40 pin connectors. I don't recall ever seeing a motherboard without a parallel port header on the board. Up until recently, I had a couple of really old 386 boards, and with those in hand...I may have been able to answer a lot of your questions better. But, if you can ask specific questions, I will attempt to answer all that I can...and those that I cannot, will be answered by the rest of the gang here..

One thing you will run into with these older boards..the serial cables were different from board to board..there was no standard. So, if you attach a serial ribbon cable to a motherboard and the mouse or whatnot is not detected...it may be the cable does not match the pinout of the header.

[Garebo]

To Bovon

Thanks for the compliment and the info.

You read my mind. I am concerned with the mouse port, the parallel port, and the serial port. I guess you are telling me that they are all different and there was no standard for any of the 3.
Problem is that I have these mobos. I almost always find some sort of info on these old boards on the net and often find manuals, bios updates, inf drivers and so on.
Guess I had better start searching since the pinouts and such are not standard and that is what i was hoping. That I could take one mouse port and ribbon cable off a dead mobo and put it on a working one. Guess trial and error wont hurt here?
Does it kill the mobo if the pinout is wrong? I almost fried an Asus VT6X4 board putting a usb connector on the header. It was supposed to be the correct one and the pinout matched etc, I did my homework on that one as is was a new mobo cpu/hs/fan and I had some bucks tied up in it. Anyway it started smoking and I unplugged it. I never did get the extra usb going as the mobo was fried right at the header but all else was still good. I still have the unit, use it as a spare. Makes me wonder what would happen with these cables and connectors. One good thing is they are not worth much to begin with so its not a big deal to fry a super socket 7 with a p133 cpu!! I can get another one for $15 or less., and I get them free all the time. Just hate to waste, thats all. My goal is to make sure every kid in my area has at least a cheap p133. But some have p2 500 and more thanks to donors like people in the forums!!!

thanks

[Bovon]

Originally posted by Garebo
To Bovon

Thanks for the compliment and the info. You're welcome

You read my mind. I am concerned with the mouse port, the parallel port, and the serial port. I guess you are telling me that they are all different and there was no standard for any of the 3.

No, not all three. Some of the older motherboards do not have headers for PS/2 mice at all.

As far as I know, all parallel port headers were the same pinout, nothing there to do a work around.

The serial port headers are the only ones I am sure of that were not the same from board to board...but, it dosn't hurt the boadrd to try different ones..if its the wrong pinout, it simply dosn't work.

You are most probably using and working with much later boards than I have setup in the past. Early 586 AT boards were a real pain sometimes. Most were silkscreened with the necessary, but you had to be a computer genius to read and understand them. Many times the maker of the motherboard could be found if there was an FCC ID number on it somewhere..then after tracking that down, you find that the maker had picked up his marbles and went home.

USB is another one that there is/was no standard. I have an FIC 503+ AT board that the headers do not match up with anybody elses..the cable was not included when I bought the board new in `98..FIC wouldn't help me obtain a cable, referring me to one of their vendors, which couldn't help either...all suggested I buy a USB card...bummer!!...I never did, and still today, I do not use USB. Most all of these ribbon cables have about 5 volts provided to power the device it will be connected to..if the wires do not match correctly, you can send that 5 volts to a ground either in the device or return it to the motherboards grounding system..placing a dead short on the 5 volt bus...this can damage the power supply and burn traces on the board as well

[Garebo]

Bovon

Thanks again for the info.

Perhaps its off to motherboard.org tl find out the mfgr and see if I can get a bios update as well as look for port settings etc.
In the meantime I got it up and running and win98se is just finishing. I put a ps2 port on it from another mobo. We'll see what happens. So far it doesnt work but it may yet, right at the very end, i've seen that happen. So I will post again either later or tomorrow.

Thanks Bovon, youre a good guy,gal, horse, dog ?

[Bovon]

Originally posted by Garebo
Thanks Bovon, youre a good guy,gal, horse, dog ? I answer to just about anything...three times a day :D (My avatar is me, 10 years ago.)

From some of my archived notes on pinouts ect, here is an image I was able to compile from different images of the PS/2 type headers.

Note that the wires are shown in the colors they actually are (or should be) The pin connector on the actual PS/2 plug appears to be standard.

What you may be able to do is, locate (say) the header on the motherboard that the red wire should be attached to. If you can find that (or any one maybe) the rest should be the same as one of these color coded headers. I *think* the plug part on the end of the mouse cable is a standard...ie...the red wire will always go to pin 1 in the plug...the hard part will be determining which is which on the mainboard.

The greyed out places in the header images may be a missing pin, or no connection...or possibly both. On my FIC board, there is no pin where the image is greyed out.

[Garebo]

Sorry, Bovon, I didnt see your pic up there, now I am embarrassed!!!!
Good thing you have a sense of humor, someone else would bite my head off for that.

As for the jpg thanks, I will see what I can do with it!!