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Broken SATA plug on motherboard
I wanted to add a second hard drive to my computer. It's an older
desktop, but works well using XP. When I looked inside, I found the plastic housing around the second SATA plug is gone. (This is the Data cable plug). The metal pins are still there, sticking out of the m-board. I've dont a lot of soldering of electronics, but I dont know where I'd buy a replacement. Then again, if I take one off a junked m-board, is it really necessary to solder in a whole new plug, or can I just slip the plastic housing over those metal pins, and glue it to the board? I've also thought about just putting a cable onto the pins, and gluing it on permanently with a large blob of silicone. I have no idea how this broke. I bought the computer second hand, so someone in the past must have done this. I suppose my other option is to just replace the current HDD with a larger one, or add a PATA (IDE) drive, since there is a connector for that too. Has anyone ever run across this rather unusual problem? |
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Broken SATA plug on motherboard
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Broken SATA plug on motherboard
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Broken SATA plug on motherboard
On Mon, 16 Oct 2017 08:53:34 -0400, Paul wrote:
wrote: I wanted to add a second hard drive to my computer. It's an older desktop, but works well using XP. When I looked inside, I found the plastic housing around the second SATA plug is gone. (This is the Data cable plug). The metal pins are still there, sticking out of the m-board. I've dont a lot of soldering of electronics, but I dont know where I'd buy a replacement. Then again, if I take one off a junked m-board, is it really necessary to solder in a whole new plug, or can I just slip the plastic housing over those metal pins, and glue it to the board? I've also thought about just putting a cable onto the pins, and gluing it on permanently with a large blob of silicone. I have no idea how this broke. I bought the computer second hand, so someone in the past must have done this. I suppose my other option is to just replace the current HDD with a larger one, or add a PATA (IDE) drive, since there is a connector for that too. Has anyone ever run across this rather unusual problem? I don't think it's an unusual problem. There were some first-generation vertical connectors, where some dumb-ass *forgot* to put a retention feature on the plastic shell, to hold it to the PCB. The only thing holding it in place, is the seven wires themselves. I got one report from someone who had a brand new motherboard with one of those, and they managed to rip the SATA connector off it, right away. Such a connector might have been marginally acceptable, with the first generation SATA cables that didn't "pinch" the connector shell. Once the industry figured out "oopsie, these SATA cables keep falling off the back of the drive", then the second generation of SATA cables implemented retention as a pinching action of the connector aperture. The third-generation added a metal "jaw" and release clip, so that there would be positive retention and the appearance of a mechanism that was under user control. (Press the metal finger release, and the jaw lets go.) So for the small number of first generation SATA boards, the boards that had two SATA connectors, yes, a lot of those will get ripped off. It's just a matter of time, and usage of any sort of modern cable. In the same year, other manufacturers managed to make connectors with plastic pins on the end, which could be swaged into the PCB with a hot iron, to hold them in place. Not all the SATA connector makers were that dumb. If you go to repair it, you're not likely to have any means to retain a modern connector (there won't be any holes in the PCB for retention pins). You might even have to *file off* the retention features, to make it fit your PCB. You could try solder plus epoxy glue, but that (obviously) isn't maintainable if you need to do it a second time. You'd have to Dremel the glue off, with some risk to the rest of the PCB, if it needed to be soldered a second time. You can get a plugin card, as a workaround. The selection of plugin cards is not great now, so you won't have the same wide selection that was available at one time. It's OK for people with PCI Express x1 slots on their board, as cards for that are available. My computer store had a small collection of those when I needed a couple PCI Express boards this summer. But for the PCI ones, with maybe a VIA chip on it, you may not have a lot of choices. With regard to VIA, I hope by now all the less-capable VIA chips are out of circulation. My Asrock board with the 8237S, the letter "S" indicated the chip was "fixed" for SATA II. It meant my Southbridge could auto-negotiate with a SATA II drive, and still run at SATA I like it was supposed to. The SATA interface is supposed to be backward compatible. But in the case of the VIA chip, it could not "withstand" the presence of SATA II or SATA III drives, and would not negotiate properly. Using the Force150 jumper on the back of a SATA II drive, and forcing it to SATA I rates, would work. Unfortunately, another industry booboo, was having SATA III drives only drop to SATA II rates, when the Force jumper was in place. Somebody "forgot" that the only bug out there, was with SATA I chips, and consequently, they should have made SATA III drives drop to SATA I rates to cover this "bug". It means you cannot connect a SATA III drive to an early VIA SATA I chip, and have it work (with or without the Force jumper installed). VIA fixed some of their stock, but you would be advised to check the history of your plugin PCI card with VIA chip, to make sure it's one that handles SATA II "a little bit". Other brands of chip are not likely to have this problem - but there aren't a lot of other brands left for the PCI bus... My PCI Express x1 card uses an Asmedia chip, but Asmedia would not have a lot of reason to make a PCI version. Intel made PCI obsolete, by removing the PCI interface from modern Southbridges. Which reduces the market opportunities for any company making PCI add-in cards. So if you're wondering why there aren't a lot of PCI cards left, that's one of the reasons. If a modern motherboard maker wants to have a PCI slot, they still can. Bridge chips are readily available, to convert a PCI Express x1 lane into a PCI bus. And because a lot of the bridges are bidirectional, you can take an Asmedia PCI Express x1 chip for SATA, connect it to a bridge chip, and use it with a PCI slot computer. But again, they don't sell a lot of PCI card designs like that ("bridged"), and any company that did that, generally retired from the market after their first batch of cards did not sell. Only the card types with the very highest sales figures, seem to survive. Paul I dont know if this is SATA 1 2 or 3. How can I tell? This is the first and only computer I have owned with SATA drives. All my older ones had IDE drives. I dont really know the age of this one either, but a google search brought up a manual and its dated 2008. http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Pro....aspx?DetailID =847&CategoryID=1&DetailName=Feature&MenuID=24&Lan ID=0 Since the computer is open, I jotted down the motherboard info. This is what it is: ECS ALIVE6100 VSTA V1.0 motherboard. When I bought this used computer, I was told it was top of the line (at it's time). It came with a 750gb HDD, which was (at that time) large. All I know is that it's fast, and works well. (using XP Pro SP3). There are no spare PCI slots, but there is a networking card that I could remove since I dont use it. There is also some other card that I dont know what it's for at all, it has two funny looking holes in it, which are larger than USB, smaller than phone jacks. By the way, the fan on the CPU is not plugged in. There is a plug for it on the MB, but there is also a case fan right next to the CPU, and that fan is plugged into that plug labeled "CPU FAN". That case fan seems to be keeping it cool. That CPU fan has never been plugged in since I bought this computer about 3 years ago. (I never opened the case till now). If I should run both fans, I guess all I can do is splice the wires from both fans together. |
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Broken SATA plug on motherboard
wrote:
I dont know if this is SATA 1 2 or 3. How can I tell? This is the first and only computer I have owned with SATA drives. All my older ones had IDE drives. I dont really know the age of this one either, but a google search brought up a manual and its dated 2008. http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Pro....aspx?DetailID =847&CategoryID=1&DetailName=Feature&MenuID=24&Lan ID=0 Since the computer is open, I jotted down the motherboard info. This is what it is: ECS ALIVE6100 VSTA V1.0 motherboard. When I bought this used computer, I was told it was top of the line (at it's time). It came with a 750gb HDD, which was (at that time) large. All I know is that it's fast, and works well. (using XP Pro SP3). There are no spare PCI slots, but there is a networking card that I could remove since I dont use it. There is also some other card that I dont know what it's for at all, it has two funny looking holes in it, which are larger than USB, smaller than phone jacks. By the way, the fan on the CPU is not plugged in. There is a plug for it on the MB, but there is also a case fan right next to the CPU, and that fan is plugged into that plug labeled "CPU FAN". That case fan seems to be keeping it cool. That CPU fan has never been plugged in since I bought this computer about 3 years ago. (I never opened the case till now). If I should run both fans, I guess all I can do is splice the wires from both fans together. OK, you can see in the picture, the board has room for four SATA connectors, and only two connectors are populated. This leaves the copper pads so we can look at them. http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Pro...uID=24&LanID=0 The pattern is seven electrical connections in the center, plus two objects outside of those which are larger. Those two objects retain the connector shell. So it does have retention, and is not the "Bad" design. If one of the two remaining SATA have been ripped off the board, then someone must have been pretty strong :-) For some reason, it almost looks like the design uses half the I/O present on the chipset. Some Southbridges of that era had four SATA and two IDE, for a total of eight hard drives. That microATX board only has two SATA and one IDE. And they designed the PCB with four SATA in mind, but then decided to only populate two of the connectors. It's an AMD motherboard. Socket 754, single memory bus off the CPU. Having the memory bus off the CPU, made it a lot better than the AthlonXP before it. NVIDIA GeForce 6100/nForce 405 It's a single chip, with graphics and Southbridge interfaces. You have a PCI Express x1 slot. So you *can* go to the store and fit a two-port SATA card with an Asmedia chip if you want, and then you can use any SATA you want. The 405 should not have a problem with negotiation, so again, if you had a SATA connector that was mechanically in good shape, it should work with modern drives. This page doesn't list the 405, but you can see from the "pattern" of offerings, that different capabilities were offered by each in the family. I expect the single chip chipset was "pin-compatible", meaning with the one motherboard, they could put a different chip on it as a function of price (marketing). http://www.nvidia.ca/page/gpu_mobo_tech_specs.html SATA/PATA drives 4/4 2/4 2/2 4/4 = four SATA, two IDE 2/4 = two SATA, two IDE 2/2 = two SATA, one IDE Your board could be using a 2/2 flavor of chip, and that's why the other two connectors have no SATA on them. Even if you soldered connectors to the two unused ports, they've been electrically turned off by NVidia as part of their clever marketing scheme. Your expansion slots, from nearest the CPU socket are PCI Express x16, wired for x16 (has 16 pairs of caps) PCI Express x1 (short white connector) PCI PCI The spec here, seems to indicate the 405 has x8 lanes for video. Why would they waste caps on 16 pairs then ? Seems a needless sham. You would have to look at your exact motherboard, and see if eight of the cap sets were removed, reflecting the real technical capability. It's not important, except to verify that chip is actually under the heatsink. http://www.nvidia.com/page/gpumobo_6..._features.html If you wanted to add a two port SATA card, it would go into one of the two PCI Express slots. An x1 card can work in an x16 slot (I've done it, for testing). Yeah, a CPU cooling fan would be nice. There is what looks like a four pin at the top of the CPU socket. I don't see any other fan header on the motherboard! To run a second fan, you'll have to run it off a Molex. The CPU fan header should monitor RPMs, so normally a three or four wire cable would be on the fan you've got at present. Otherwise, the BIOS would start beeping, indicating fan failure :-) If you plug a two wire fan into that CPU FAN header, the BIOS should beep, because there's no RPM pulse on the third (missing) wire. When it comes to fans, Newegg is full of bad deals. This is an example. A $10 fan for $46 dollars. LOL. The non-Newegg sellers are scumbags. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...9SIA7HN50G6721 I picked that one, to show it has a Molex power connector. The fan has two wires, +12V and GND, so the Molex only needs two electrical connections. The 1x3 connector has a white wire on that. You would connect that to a motherboard header so RPMs on the fan could be monitored. Since you don't have a CHASSIS header on your motherboard, that 1x3 would remain unconnected. And then that fan could be used for CHASSIS cooling. If you needed to replace your only fan, you could put the 1x3 connector on the CPU FAN header, and still connect the Molex to the power supply to get power. The fan speed cannot be varied on that one, since it runs off the power supply directly. Using the 1x3 connector with the single white wire, on the CPU FAN header, would prevent the BIOS from beeping. But at $46, you'd be a fool to buy that particular fan. Noctua makes some nice fans, in their trademark brown color. There are enough products here, I would almost suspect some shenanigans with counterfeits or something. To pick a fan, you need some idea of size (80mm or 120mm), the CFM you'd want (30-35CFM). Too low a CFM is a waste of money. Too high of a CFM (110CFM) on an "ultra", is too noisy. They come in "low", "medium", "high", "ultra". And a "medium" is about the best choice from a noise perspective, and will be in the 30-35CFM range. They come in 15mm thick (slim), 25mm thick (normal), 37.5mm (blower). I have a 37.5mm thick one here, and it's 110CFM. I only use that with a reducer connected to it, to drop the voltage it gets :-) I had that fan on the Test PC, but had to remove it and put a quieter fan in its place, as it was getting annoying. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...STMATCH&page=1 The biggest curse of fans today is... LEDS. I got what I thought were two acceptable fans at my local computer store, only to find when I took them out of the package, then had blinding blue LEDs on them. Arggh! The Noctua products are not known for "bling", so you should be safe from LEDs with their products. Paul |
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Broken SATA plug on motherboard
On Mon, 16 Oct 2017 14:20:20 -0400, Paul wrote:
wrote: OK, you can see in the picture, the board has room for four SATA connectors, and only two connectors are populated. This leaves the copper pads so we can look at them. http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Pro...LLERY.aspx?Det ailID=847&CategoryID=1&DetailName=Feature&MenuID=2 4&LanID=0 The pattern is seven electrical connections in the center, plus two objects outside of those which are larger. Those two objects retain the connector shell. So it does have retention, and is not the "Bad" design. If one of the two remaining SATA have been ripped off the board, then someone must have been pretty strong :-) For some reason, it almost looks like the design uses half the I/O present on the chipset. Some Southbridges of that era had four SATA and two IDE, for a total of eight hard drives. That microATX board only has two SATA and one IDE. And they designed the PCB with four SATA in mind, but then decided to only populate two of the connectors. It's an AMD motherboard. Socket 754, single memory bus off the CPU. Having the memory bus off the CPU, made it a lot better than the AthlonXP before it. NVIDIA GeForce 6100/nForce 405 It's a single chip, with graphics and Southbridge interfaces. You have a PCI Express x1 slot. So you *can* go to the store and fit a two-port SATA card with an Asmedia chip if you want, and then you can use any SATA you want. The 405 should not have a problem with negotiation, so again, if you had a SATA connector that was mechanically in good shape, it should work with modern drives. This page doesn't list the 405, but you can see from the "pattern" of offerings, that different capabilities were offered by each in the family. I expect the single chip chipset was "pin-compatible", meaning with the one motherboard, they could put a different chip on it as a function of price (marketing). http://www.nvidia.ca/page/gpu_mobo_tech_specs.html SATA/PATA drives 4/4 2/4 2/2 4/4 = four SATA, two IDE 2/4 = two SATA, two IDE 2/2 = two SATA, one IDE Your board could be using a 2/2 flavor of chip, and that's why the other two connectors have no SATA on them. Even if you soldered connectors to the two unused ports, they've been electrically turned off by NVidia as part of their clever marketing scheme. Your expansion slots, from nearest the CPU socket are PCI Express x16, wired for x16 (has 16 pairs of caps) PCI Express x1 (short white connector) PCI PCI The spec here, seems to indicate the 405 has x8 lanes for video. Why would they waste caps on 16 pairs then ? Seems a needless sham. You would have to look at your exact motherboard, and see if eight of the cap sets were removed, reflecting the real technical capability. It's not important, except to verify that chip is actually under the heatsink. http://www.nvidia.com/page/gpumobo_6..._features.html If you wanted to add a two port SATA card, it would go into one of the two PCI Express slots. An x1 card can work in an x16 slot (I've done it, for testing). Yeah, a CPU cooling fan would be nice. There is what looks like a four pin at the top of the CPU socket. I don't see any other fan header on the motherboard! To run a second fan, you'll have to run it off a Molex. The CPU fan header should monitor RPMs, so normally a three or four wire cable would be on the fan you've got at present. Otherwise, the BIOS would start beeping, indicating fan failure :-) If you plug a two wire fan into that CPU FAN header, the BIOS should beep, because there's no RPM pulse on the third (missing) wire. When it comes to fans, Newegg is full of bad deals. This is an example. A $10 fan for $46 dollars. LOL. The non-Newegg sellers are scumbags. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...9SIA7HN50G6721 I picked that one, to show it has a Molex power connector. The fan has two wires, +12V and GND, so the Molex only needs two electrical connections. The 1x3 connector has a white wire on that. You would connect that to a motherboard header so RPMs on the fan could be monitored. Since you don't have a CHASSIS header on your motherboard, that 1x3 would remain unconnected. And then that fan could be used for CHASSIS cooling. If you needed to replace your only fan, you could put the 1x3 connector on the CPU FAN header, and still connect the Molex to the power supply to get power. The fan speed cannot be varied on that one, since it runs off the power supply directly. Using the 1x3 connector with the single white wire, on the CPU FAN header, would prevent the BIOS from beeping. But at $46, you'd be a fool to buy that particular fan. Noctua makes some nice fans, in their trademark brown color. There are enough products here, I would almost suspect some shenanigans with counterfeits or something. To pick a fan, you need some idea of size (80mm or 120mm), the CFM you'd want (30-35CFM). Too low a CFM is a waste of money. Too high of a CFM (110CFM) on an "ultra", is too noisy. They come in "low", "medium", "high", "ultra". And a "medium" is about the best choice from a noise perspective, and will be in the 30-35CFM range. They come in 15mm thick (slim), 25mm thick (normal), 37.5mm (blower). I have a 37.5mm thick one here, and it's 110CFM. I only use that with a reducer connected to it, to drop the voltage it gets :-) I had that fan on the Test PC, but had to remove it and put a quieter fan in its place, as it was getting annoying. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...STMATCH&page=1 The biggest curse of fans today is... LEDS. I got what I thought were two acceptable fans at my local computer store, only to find when I took them out of the package, then had blinding blue LEDs on them. Arggh! The Noctua products are not known for "bling", so you should be safe from LEDs with their products. Paul If I can buy a PCI card for the SATA drives that will fit in this machine, that would be preferred. I have no problem soldering stuff, but removing the whole motherboard and all of that seems like a lot of work. Yea, I dont know how they managed to break that plug???? As far as my fan. I found there are two 3pin plugs on the MOBO. One says "CPU Fan". The other says "SYS FAN". Whoever built this computer should have plugged the CPU fan into the CPU plug, and put the case fan into the SYS Fan plug (I assume). I can change it and put the CPU fan on the CPU FAN connector. However the case fan wires are too short to reach the SYS FAN connector. So, I guess I have two choices. Either cut the plug off that fan and splice in some longer wires, or buy a Molex adaptor for it. If they sell Molex adaptors, that would be preferred. (Or do they sell fan wire extensions?). I know that case fan only needs direct 12V. Thanks |
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Broken SATA plug on motherboard
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Broken SATA plug on motherboard
On Mon, 16 Oct 2017 16:38:42 -0400, Paul wrote:
wrote: On Mon, 16 Oct 2017 14:20:20 -0400, Paul wrote: I make my own fan cables and extenders here. I was able to buy bags of connectors and crimp pins at my "real" electronics store. You would not expect that at something like a Radio Shack, as it would be too useful to stock such an item. For example, I chop up Molex Y-cables, to make a means to tap into PSU power. You can probably find an extender, but it should have a male connector with a plastic "box" around the pins. If the product uses an open male connector, if that drops down inside the PC, it can short out, and the 12V wire will become incandescent. Plastic smoke will fill the air. Be careful with fan extenders!!! If you use a nylon wrap to partially secure the cable, you can limit the range of the dangerous connector pins, so they don't touch important stuff. This is an example of the "dangerous kind". The connector on the left is an open male, ready to short out... and smoke. The advantage of the open male connector, is a three pin or four pin fan could be connected to it. If the protective plastic "box" was around the connector, *only* a three pin fan would fit. The connector on the right is the female that mates with the motherboard connector. The female would work with a three or four pin motherboard header, so the female end could actually be connected to the CPU FAN header. when only three of the four wires are connected, you lose speed control. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...9SIAAD049D5932 ******* When you use three wires, pin 4 is not connected. This wiring diagram shows the pin order. If you connect a 3 pin to a 4 pin mobo connector, pin 1 goes to pin 1. And pin 4 goes open circuit, and a four wire CPU fan goes to "max speed" when pin 4 is open. http://www.overclockers.com/forums/a...8&d=1300219923 Pin 1 and 2 are necessary for the fan to spin. Pin 3 measures RPM. Connect it to shut up the BIOS beeping noise :-) Pin 4 gives CPU FAN speed control. Some more expensive motherboards have four pin connectors for everything, allowing 2 wire, 3 wire or 4 wire fans to be used. Paul If I had the parts, I'd make one too. But I found a 12" extender on ebay for $2.99. I bought it. It's male on one end, female on the other. I am not sure if it has a box around the connector. If it looks like it can short out to anything, I'll just wrap the connection with electrical tape. I've never had anything like that short out, but I had an unused end of a molex connector fall on the CPU fan in another computer. It was loud and freaked me out, till I found what it was. A tie wrap made it so that cant happen again. Nothing was hurt, but I was outside, walked into the house and could hear it on the other end of the house. Sounded like the whole computer was gonna blow up. I was glad to find it was nothing serious. |
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