Finding it hard to put leads back on to mot...

Mar 03, 2009

- I think the front panel header is the set of pins at the lower left of the board as shown in the photo you attached. Usually the pins are in that area to make it easy for wires from the front to plug in. You won't hurt anything if you plug wires onto the wrong places on this header. It just won't work.

Unless the board is completely non-standard, there should be ten pins (two rows of five) with the end pin on one row missing. Probably in very fine print somewhere near that header will be a marking like "F_PNL" or "JFP" or something that might sound like "panel", but not always. Try connecting the wires from the front panel as shown on page 11 of the ECS manual.

If the system doesn't turn on when you hook up the wires as shown in the manual, try plugging the power switch connector onto adjacent pairs of pins (along the same side, not across the two rows). Then try the power button. Once you find the power switch pins you can find the other connections the same trial-an-error way. The LED (power and IDE drive indicators) have polarity, but it's not usually marked on the connector. When you plug onto a set of pins, if the light doesn't come on try turning the plug around before moving on to another pair of pins. It won't damage the LED if you hook it up backwards, it just won't light.

Sorry it's not turning out to be as easy as I'd hope, but you only have 3 or 4 connections to the front to sort out, so you shall prevail!