Front Panel Connections for Dell E210882 Motherboard
Sunday, June 29, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Windows 2000 Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Ben Poehland
(1 messages posted)
Heads-up, people! I think I can finally shed some light on the confusion that has
reigned in this forum since 2005.
I have 3 Dell motherboards with the E210882 designation, all identical & salvaged
from Dell Dimension 4400 systems with the dreadful clamshell case. Since I have
the original Dell docs for one of the systems, I trashed the awful cases without
tracing the custom 34-pin front panel connections, on the assumption that information
was in the Dell docs. It wasn't. Nor is it available from the Dell website. Anyone
who buys one of these boards will find it can't be connected to a standard case,
so there is no way to even turn it on. (I bear a great hatred of Dell, & this experience
did not improve my attitude.) The boards themselves are worth little, maybe $50
apiece on a good day. But I have a valid WinXP license for these boards, along with
the original Dell hardware fingerprint. That means I can build 3 systems off these
boards without having to run down to Office Depot & plunk down $200 a pop for fresh
licensed copies of XP. I got so frustrated with these boards I came within a hairsbreadth
of trashing the lot. But the prospect of tossing $600 worth of software licenses
in the trash forced me to take one last look at the problem.
BOARD IDENTIFICATION: Huge problem. No one posting to this forum has properly identified
their board. These E210882 boards are all made by Intel, which used the E210882
designator as a UL certification identifier. It is NOT a board model number. There
are at least 30 different boards, utilizing at least 6 different chipsets, all bearing
this number. Everyone in this forum has been comparing apples to oranges. At the
very least you must say what your chipset is, & the best way to do that is to physically
remove the heatsink off the North Bridge chip (the one closest to the CPU) & write
down the numbers. In my case the chipset was a plain-vanilla Intel 845. It also
helps if you identify the South Bridge chip, which in my case is Intel 82801BA (located
behind the PCI slots). That information is absolutely necessary, but not necessarily
sufficient, to identify the actual board model.
I got lucky. In the space between the memory slots & the CPU is a long skinny label
with a barcode & some numbers beginning DS/N MY-01K529... . I peeled up this label,
& underneath I discovered the legend INTEL DESKTOP BOARD D845PT screened directly
onto the board. Voila! There is a ton of docs on this board at Intel's website:
http://support.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/d845pt
I downloaded the Intel hardware manual PDF file & thought my problems were solved.
Nope. The Intel D845PT & the Dell D845PT are not the same critter. The Dell version
has been bastardized, & in addition the Dell P05 BIOS is a butchered version of Intel's
original P01 BIOS. (Dell rhymes with Hell.)
Upon closer inspection, the differences are not as bad as it seems at first glance.
The Dell version has the hard drive ports in different locations. The Dell version
also has 4 PCI slots, while the Intel version has 3 PCI slots plus a CNR slot. These
differences, while highly visible, fortunately are insignificant. The Dell board
also has 2 extra proprietary connectors not found on the Intel board: a 10-pin header
labelled J8A1 in the rear left corner, & a 34-pin header labelled J7H4 at the front
left corner. (My boards apparently are identical to the one described by Angela;
see the photos at http://www.builtbymom.com/wtf for a view of J7H4). Sadly, the
Intel docs provide no data whatever on these proprietary connectors. It is the stuff
missing from the Dell boards that is of interest - - specifically the standard front
panel 16-pin header J8H1 & 3-pin fan headers J8H2 & J1B2. Although not installed,
these headers are fully documented in the Intel manual.
WARM UP THE SOLDERING IRON. I installed a double-row header at J8H1, taking care
to pull out pins 10 & 14 to allow for the index spaces, then installed 3-pin single-row
headers at the fan connectors. All the holes are plugged with solder that must be
removed before the header pins can be inserted. The easiest way to do that is to
first prime each hole with a little extra fine-gauge solder (Kester 60/40, .015"
dia.). Hold the iron tip in the hole on the foil side to melt it, then bring the
board close to your face & blow hard while removing the hot iron. A little messy,
but very fast & clean holes every time.
At bootup (P4-1.6GHz + 256M PC2100 DDR RAM), there were problems: 1.) The front panel
header pin descriptions for J8H1 were not exactly as described in the Intel docs;
2.) The fans did not work at all; 3.) The hard drive LED did not work; 4.) Bogus
BIOS error messages appeared warning that the front panel audio & USB ports were
not connected. I'll deal with these anomalies in order:
1.) Front panel header pins: The Intel docs describing the pin designations for RESET
& PWR ON/OFF are reversed on the Dell version of the board. On the Dell board, the
CORRECT pinout for J8H1 is as follows:
1-3: HD LED (#1 is +)
2-4: PWR LED (#2 is +)
5-7: PWR ON/OFF
6-8: RESET
5,16: +5V
10,11,14,15: not connected
12,13: GND
2.) Fan headers: voltmeter tests indicated that the fine folks at Dell left pin #1
of these headers disconnected. On both headers, pin #1 is GND. For fan header J8H2,
a short piece of insulated kynar wire was soldered between pin 12 of J8H1 to pin
1 of J8H2 on the foil side of the board. For J1B2, the connection was made from
pin 1 of J1B2 to the GND hole of unused capacitor C188. After making these connections,
upon bootup both fan headers worked fine. A few oddball fans I tried still didn't
work, but all standard-wired fans ran OK. Interestingly, most fans even ran with
the plugs reversed, albeit at reduced speed. In these headers pin 2 is +12V, & pin
3 is the SMS tachometer control, so maybe that explains it. However you must still
use J1F1 CPU Fan header near DIMM slot 1 for your CPU, as this header provides maximun
current (one whole ampere) to run a big CPU fan. The +12V pin in the auxiliary connectors
J8H2 & J1B2 delivers lesser amounts of current, I think it was 300mA for one & 500mA
for the other (I forget which is which, check the Intel manual for details).
3.) Hard drive LED not working: Voltmeter test showed pin 1 of front panel header
J8H1 disconnected. (Nice work, Dell.) This pin should be connected to +5V via a
pullup resistor. Easy fix. On the foil side, I soldered a 330-ohm 5% 1/8-watt resistor
(color bands: orange-orange-brown-gold) between pins 1 & 9 of J8H1. Upon bootup,
the hard drive activity indicator LED now works. You could use a larger 1/4-watt
resistor, but with cramped space smaller is better.
4.) BIOS error messages: There are 2 of these, one atop the other. The first reads:
Alert! Front panel audio cable not detected! The 2nd one is similar: Alert! Front
panel USB cable not connected! (Why ANYBODY would make BIOS monitor these auxiliary
non-critical functions is beyond me. But I'm sure Dell knoweth.) I managed to make
the USB message disappear by shorting pins 9-10 in the proprietary 34-pin header
J7H4. The spacing in this header is nonstandard & required an oddball mini-jumper
salvaged from an old PIO hard drive. I made this discovery by shorting together
each pair of pins in the 34-pin header & booting the board 17 times (gosh that was
fun). Along the way I also discovered that pins 19-20 are the POWER ON/OFF control
pins.
As to the remaining BIOS error message regarding the front panel audio cables, I
haven't solved that yet. I did try installing double-pin headers at J6B1 & placing
shorting jumpers across pins 5-6 & 9-10, but that didn't work. Perhaps some combination
of pin shorting in the proprietary connector J8A1 might work, but at this point I
just ran outta gas. My boards are now functional & can be installed in standard
cases & run with legal copies of XP, which was my goal. The audio bootup message
is mildly annoying but has no effect on operation of the board.
One last thing: on the rear panel of the Dell version of this board is a vertical
row of 4 LED's (between the USB ports & the parallel port). These lites blink yellow
& green during bootup, then all stay green after bootup. Dell docs describe these
lites as "Diagnostic LED's", but give no details on how the changing color patterns
might be used to diagnose a problem. Wish I didn't notice stuff like that, keeps
me awake at night. Oh well, the Dell Dummies win again.
My apologies to this forum for posting this message in the wrong area, but the original
thread started here so I'm tacking onto it to maintain continuity.
Hope this helps someone out there... The Alchemist
On Monday, May 26, 2008 at 10:01 pm, TimC wrote:
>I just wanted to say Thanks for keeping this info available! Yes, I know this is
>two years later, but I just bought one of these boards to replace a different board
>that had failed. The info in your post filled in the missing blanks for me (I had
>to change the pinout on the front USB cable and a couple of the front panel connections.)
>And it runs great with windows xp pro.
>
>
>
- Written in response to:
- re: front switch connections (TimC: Monday, May 26, 2008 at 10:01 pm)
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