Firewire fries mobo - help needed

[harrillj]

Hi,

I recently purchased a new config from MWave.com; Intel P4 3.0c 800FSB, Gigabyte GA-8KNXP mobo, 2 gig of Corsair DDR400 PC3200LL memory, Thermaltake Xazer III V2000A case, and a bunch of serial ATA raid. Anyway, I have actually fried 2 motherboards!!! I am learning the hard way. The 3rd one is being shipped overnight. In both cases, it happened when I plugged a firewire compact flash card reader into the firewire port on the top of the PC. This port is connected to the mobo with a cable that had 8 connections. (explained below). After I fried the first mobo, I contacted MWave for the instructions, as they actually built it initially for me. To my horror today, when I plugged in the firewire device today... boom. The firewire chip on the mobo was in flames, so obvioulsy the instructions from MWave were wrong. MWave's been great, replacing the mobos for no charge and shipping overnight, but now I am afraid to ask for instructions from them.

The actual cable, which comes with the Thermaltake case, is labeled as the following:

TPA+
TBA-
TPB+
TPB-
VP
VG
Gnd
Gnd

The connection on the motherboard has a socket with 9 pins, two rows, 5 pins across in one row, and 4 pins across in the row underneath. The motherboard manual states the following:

2 10
It looks like this: 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0
pin 1 9

The instructions from the motherboard show the following for installation:

Pin No. Definition
1 TPA2+
2 TPA2-
3 GND
4 GND
5 TBB2+
6 TPB2-
7 POWER
8 POWER
9 No Pin
10 GND


Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. I have gotten nowhere with Thermaltake and Gigabyte Tech support either.

Thanks

 

[lobadobadingdong]

are you certain you don't have a bad cf reader.

 

[Blackbox]

I've just RMA'd my 8knxp mobo because the firewire ports wouldn't work.

I've got the new board and the firewire's working ok. I thought I'd check the connections on the Xaser 3 top firewire port before I hooked it up. Vp (white) is connected to pin 2 and Vg black is connected to pin 1. This is wrong. It should be the other way round.

Are your connections like this? Maybe this is what's wrong with your case too.

I'm waiting for a reply from Thermaltake before I hook it up with the wires reversed.