Usually there are about 8-9 of the standoffs. Check the MB and the CASE manual. The MB should have standard ATX & Micro ATX spacing for the screws. The Standoffs and the holes in the case will match these. You never mount directly to the case, as it will short out the back side.

the case "insert" has raised metal bumps on it and they look to be ~~ the same spacing as the hole in the M-board

It might be right. You may find you still need the 2 standoff in some spot, maybe the middle.

ok, the M-board is screwed down. It had some solder stars around the holes on the bottom, perhaps to gnd it to the case thru the metal bumps on the case sheet metal panel, but I didn't see any traces from those on the board.

I was able to match up enuff holes to use 4 metal machine screws - I guess that will be adequate, and that no washers are needed to spread the force.

For others doing this: find a Phillips screwdriver that can hold the screws attached until they are threaded (I used lip balm). Forceps will be needed to remove the little metal screws you drop onto the circuit boards. Also, a small right angle mirror on a stick can help you figure out which side of a connector has the metal connections on it.

A lot of small pins you see sticking out of various components are not for connectors - they are for jumpers to set things up in hardware a particular way.

Forceps = tweezers

There are a LOT of connectors on the M-board! I guess some are for legacy compatibility.

I see a bunch of SATA ones in a corner - will have to see if the HDD info SATA cable needs to go in a particular one.

4? There should be about 8 to hold it down. And you have the little rear plate installed in the case before you put in the MB, right? The rear plate seals up the back of the machine and matches the MB to the case.

Feeling your pain, Randy. Even though I never actually assembled one, I have stuck my hands into many PC boxes over the years. Good luck.

Ian

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1291930961.jpg

yes, I have the plate in.

there are ONLY 4 bumps on the case which will match holes in the mother board. Case a total of 8 bumps but 4 are far from the edge of the M-board.

BTW - just found out none of the screws that came with the case will fit into that Sony DVD/CD drive. Luckily, I live near a hardware store.

not really a pain, Ian - but a novice will need > 2 hrs do this carefully. If somebody is a real novice w/ no electronics experience ever, they might need a friend on site...

Just try doing an ITX case...The case is 1/4 the size of an ATX unit.

yeh - that's what I figured. I have plenty of space to put it in, and a bigger case also might allow better cooling.

I'm back from the hardware store - add $1.36 for #4 machine screws & some washers. I was worried they might be too long (3/8") for the case of the Sony DVD drive, but using a paper clip to disengage the latch & moving the tray manually, it seemed fine.

Do you think the motherboard is secure enuff? It seems ok to me, and this computer won't be moved around much...

Should be fine

well, I got paranoid and added one in a flat part of the case mount (near the SATA connector corner)

I used a combination of woodworking, jewelers, and surgical tools to do it w/o pulling the board all the way up...

Quick picture of the board and case?

Connections from the Power Supply:

[1] the big 24 pin (they label it 20 + 4) connector must be what the motherboard manual calls ATXPWR1 - no other place it can go

[2] the 4 pin square connector (yellow & black wires) can only fit the ATXPWR2 connector

[3] there are two SATA Power Connectors (about 2 cm wide; with 5 wires each) - I put these into the HDD and DVD inserts.

[4] there is a daisy chain of connectors left over - it has two of 4 round pin connectors on it (Molex?) and at the end the 4 wires go to a 4 pin flat plug of some sort.

- I'm not sure what to do with cable #4. If it is all for legacy applications, I can just tie wrap it out of the way. The 4 pin flat loug makes me think it needs to be used for something however.

- I note that the GPU (graphics) card is a double-wide trailer sort of thing and has its own fan. That makes me suspicious that it might want its own power supply (ind. of the power thru the m-board). It has some metal traces on top of its PCB that look like they might like something connected there... but each of those two tabs has a dozen or more connecting traces so it can't be for the 4 wire flat connector.

Other Connections:

Each independently mounted device (HDD and DVD drive) gets a yellow SATA cable from it to the motherboard. The SATA connectors are labelled and the manual provides no guidance re which of the 6 should get what,so I just plugged the HDD into SATA #1, and the DVD into #2.

The CPU has a 4 wire connector on its fan - that goes into a 4 pin connector on the motherboard labeled CPU Fan.

Connections from the Plastic Front Panel of the Case:

[a] red & white twisted pair, labeled HDD LED -

[b] blue & white twisted pair, labeled RESET SW -

[c] red & black thin zipcord, labeled SPEAKER -

[d] 4 wires, unlabeled; goes to the power switch on top of the case

[e] 7 wire connector, labeled AUDIO in gray cable; goes to top of case somewhere

[f] two gray cables go to a single connector, labeled USB 2.0


BTW - I have no idea if any of this is std. wiring colors, or what tho I assume the connectors are standardized. Anyway, here it is for those who want to do this yourselves.

This has been a painful thread to read.....

"unsubscribing"

Did ya ever Google "how to build a pc"

and perhaps find...

Something like this?

How to build a PC

thanks for your helpful comments Timmy. I did indeed search and found numerous such threads, as you'd have seen if you'd read the posts above. However none matches too well to what I have.

Colors change...except the wires in the power supply connectors

thx - the only connector I can't figure out is:

[d] 4 wires, unlabeled; goes to the power switch on top of the case

at one end of the connector is a Green wire (it has the arrow mark and a white dot also); next to that, in order, are White, Black, Tan wires and then a blocked off pin

This 5 position connector with 4 wires (4 open female mounting receptacles) can only fit on the multi-pin connector on the motherboard shown below if you off set it by one pin - i.e. it won't fit (b/c of the block-off at position #5) if you try to put the Green wire connector on the pin that the arrow points to.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1291944732.jpg

It will fit if I move it to the left, and skip the pin below the "f" where the label says On/Off - then the blocked-off spot on the connector fits down into the open hole on the plastic board receptacle.

But it seems weird to do that & I don't want to blow anything up - I can't find any other place on the mother-board where this connector will fit, also "On/Off" makes sense. Pixxo, the case manf., doesn't have any documentation on it that I can find.

Is it a single connector? Usually it is a series of 4 connectors with 2 wires each.
When I was building one with an old case, the connector was an 8 block. I had to break the connector to plug them into the right places.

Show a pic of the connector.

Here it is:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1291947282.jpg

I assume 2 wires are for the power switch and 2 other wires are for the LED power annunciator.

the 5th position on the connector (at R) is blocked off and prevents installation at the arrow on the Panel1 socket in the pic of the motherboard. I don't know that it should be inserted there - just a guess.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1291947693.jpg

I pulled this from the TA890GXB HD off the website

It looks to me the green wire goes to the edge. Run the wires back and make sure the white green wires go to the switch.

yes, I have that diagram & pin out

if - if the green wire is for the power switch, then you'd get:

Green & White = power

Black = - LED
Tan = + LED

if the other wires really run to a LED by or on the Power switch (and who knows); if those are the LED runs then one could further hope it is the correct polarity

otherwise, I guess you'd blow the LED

I have an Email in to Pixxo so maybe they can explain what's what - their support has been poor so far tho.

Well, the color coding for the LED wires seems correct. They've used black for the negative.

Red's correct. Typically that connector is two pieces. If it were me, I'd open up the 5th hole. It may be a manufacturing defect, meaning it was meant to be open but there is a little bit of material that did not get completely removed.

Or tin snips to just remove the 5th position...

thx, I'll do that if I don't hear back from the either manf. soon.

I was able to fritter away my excess spare time today bu planing, drilling, and countersinking some drawer rail supports (see my Just Jackin Around thread), and by putting up a support bar to mount a ski rack in my garage. I plan to drink and eat the rest of today and may go pick up some Bagua (chinese martial arts) training to top off the evening.

Sat. is football, more drinking, fizzy stuff drinking party, & maybe even look at the jumper setting on the m-board.

so I plan to keep busy - will just keep using the old desktop & a couple of laptops for backup, so... no hurry on this thing.

Most of them don't have any jumper settings. The only thing most of my boards have for a jumper setting was reseting the bios to factory defaults. I did have one board with 2 other jumpers for opening up a 3 core AMD unit to a 4 core unit (4 for the price of 3!!!).

the Biostar motherboard manual lumps "Headers" into a single chapter with Jumpers - a Header is just some sort of connector (i.e. serial, parallel, S-P/DIF and some extra (?) USB) - also has USB "power source headers for USB ports" which appear to be jumpers - guess I can safely ignore those

I DO see at least one oddity: the manual sez the Clear CMOS Header (a jumper, called JCMOS1) should be set to Pin 1-2 Close (jumpered together) for Normal Operation, the default.

However, the board came with Pins 2-3 Closed.

This sounds something like what you had.

I don't know if it matters as the instructions to "to restore the BIOS safe setting and the CMOS data" tell you to set it to pin 2-3 close; wait 5 sec. then change it to pin 1-2 close; turn on the power and then reset your password or clear the CMOS data.

- not clear what the idea here - maybe the jumper prevents alteration by the user going thru the BIOS?

The 2-3 shorts out the capacitor that holds voltage to the bios settings. It would be the same as if the battery was removed for a few minutes.

ah -- ok, I'll move that one