Some days ago I bought a Mitsumi.com 7in1 Internal Media Drive FA402A to easily store images from my digital camera. Though when I should connect it to the motherboard (ASUS A7V8X) I realized it did not fit physically. Examining the connector more closely revealed that the pinout did not match with the pinout as described in the manual for the motherboard. Calling MicroStore where I bought the reader did not help much. They claimed the reader should work with ASUS motherboards and for sure with MSI motherboards as they had one there working(MS-6596).

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I downloaded the MSI 6596 manual to check the pinout and according to the manual it had the exact same pinout as my ASUS motherboard. Strange! After some more calls to MicroStore I finally took the car down to the store bringing the reader with me. It turned out that the manual and the actual motherboard did not match. The motherboard MicroStore had version 20B while the one on MSI’s homepage is only Version 1. So I guess the pinout has changed but not the manuals. Anyway this did not help much. I continued searching the web but did not find any solution that described the strange pinout on the MSI boards, though I found more and more pages indicating how to move cables around in internal USB connectors. Seems to be a common problem to fit internal USB connectors. This page described the colouring most commonly used for internal USB cables and the colouring scheme matched the one on the cable from the reader so maybe that could be a solution. Though I was a bit confused since there were two black cables coming from the reader but checking with an instrument they both were connected to GND. It’s quite easy to to shift around the cables in this kind of connectors so I gave it a try. If you do not know how to do remove and re-insert a cable this page describes how to do it. I moved the cables (one black and the red) that was not in their appropriate position according to my ASUS manual. Also had to move the plug (the one preventing you to put the connector in wrong position) to pin 9. That made the reader fit the connector on my motherboard and it works now!