As stated before... not interested in making or selling these. I'll provide a how to but that's about it. The price of admission is you'll have to DIY.

Parts List:

1. 1x XFX Low Profile Kit (I scavenged the VGA connector from this, and later soldered a longer ribbon cable to it)
2. 1x 26 position 2mm pitch Connector Housing
3. 15x 2 24-28AWG Crimp Connector Terminal (Fits into the housing)

Product Links
The Connector Housing I got (10)
The Crimp Terminals I got (100)

An Alternative Connector housing
and its matching connector terminal

There may be other alternatives...

If you're trying to find your own on digikey start with the search "conn housing 2mm 26pos", find the connector you want, pull its datasheet which will tell you what terminals you need. When selecting terminals keep in mind that ribbon cable is 28 AWG.

Tips:
The metric terminals I got needed a special $300 crimper. I thought my standard $13 DSUB crimper would do the trick. It Didn't. It was able to clamp the crimp the "strain relief" part of the terminal (the part that grabs the insulation) but it couldn't make the electrical connection. I ended up soldering the wire to each terminal. It's possible terminals from another company may work with a standard crimper.

Additional TidBits
The second 'extra' connector attached to the cable in the vid is just to hold the terminals I haven't connected yet. I preferred this to letting them hang loose.

The XFX Low Profile adapter cable is about half the length as the one pictured (ie: will not reach the outside of the case once re-assembled) and it also didn't come with the two screws needed to secure a monitor cable.

Congrats on getting that working!

The BIOS doesn't support dual core processors, you'll never get that working without a BIOS update.

The onboard flash is 256MB, and is write protected (though an enterprising individual could probably find a way around that).

This is TOP 3 of hardware hacks, you know:

1.- RAM upgrade
2.- Proccessor upgrade
and

3.- VGA-out upgrade

and for me...

4.- Buggy power fan replacement
5.- ...

What next?



Very good work. I'm gonna be the next one in making this DIY connector.

Thanks..... and can you post a video with a little more resolution, please?

And... does anybody know what is the other mobo connector for? PS/2 perhaps?

good to see that i'm not alone in soldering those damned crimp connector pins

usually i use a small pair of pliers to get a reasonable mechanical connection, then tin the assembly to keep it together. i'll post the VGA d-sub part numbers when i order my parts (fry's usually stocks these as well -- shouldn't be more than a dollar for the assembly).

Want to make a few? I'd gladly pay the price for parts that were listed:

housing x 10 : 4.49
crimp terminal x 100 : 3.75
Alt. Connector Housing : .41
Connector Terminal : .26
--------------------------------
Total 8.91

+ shipping & handling (and a little profit) for $15.00. PM me if interested!

Same here!

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

I'm in for a cable too!!!

Thanks... Sorry about the vid quality -- I used a digital camera to film (ie: static focus - can't re-focus while filming). The original source I uploaded to youtube was actually readable -- although barely so, I admit. But YouTube's processing made it even blurrier than it already was - which is why I tried to post to liveleak because they don't really screw with the video as much. If you have a specific request of something you'd like to see I'll gladly take a still picture and post it here.

As for the other pins & things... With video & USB keyboard in hand I think I'm going to leave it at that... finding the rest imho is going to be very hard... finding an analog signal like VGA is easier to find than a digital signal when you're limited by what equipment you have at hand like I am... I think there are people on the forum that know the complete pin-out but they're probably under NDA so... yeah I think this is going to be as good as it gets at least for a little while...

And finally...
Not to crush anyone's hopes of getting 'manufactured' cable for cheap... I really hope someone finds a way to make these cheaply and quickly so the non-DIY inclined can get their hookup as well... but you guys are seriously underestimating how big a PITA it is to solder all these connections.

agreed. sorry guys.

Edit: NM...was able to get it after watching the video several times. Looks like "Power State Resume Control" on the Power Management screen is what I'm looking for...

Great job!

Can anyone tell me if the BIOS contains an option for automatically powering the machine back on after a power loss? I have this setup on all of my PCs except for this...

Thanks!

There is, and if you follow this post you can set it.

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/ ... .php?t=609

Some of you may be interested in a post I placed in another thread regarding MSS starting up after a power failure. See here:

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/ ... 4&start=15

(Edited to remove details in that other thread.)

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

edited - personal comment not relavent to current discussion... sorry!

Edited to remove details provided in alternative thread referenced above.

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

Perfect. Thank you!