Need more USB ?

[Just Plain Fred]

Hello all,
"Kinda" found this by accident, but i thought to pass this along... I found myself needing more USB2 ports and was going to go the external powered hub route... Having just switched cases and remembered that i saw something on my motherboard that made me think ( unusual occurrence) There was a unused USB 2 header on the motherboard. So i thought to give it a "look see" and try something... Found this Link explaining the connections and offered a 2 port USB Plate adapter...It worked ...

Bottom line: if you need more USB ports ..have a look at your motherboard there may be some that are already there ...just not used. Regards Fred

PS: The connector is made by "StarTech.com"... if you want to explore other options

[jwitalka]

Neat Fred. My Motherboard came packaged with that plate adapter so I connected it when I built my PC. I just assumed all motherboards came that way.

Sounds like you solved your problem but If I found the need for more USB ports, I would look into USB 3 adapters.

Jerry

[DrWho]

USB-3 is a lot like SATA III. It's out there, alive and well, but has not become mainstream yet.

Needing some more USB ports myself, I dug around in my junk stores and came up with five (5) USB/PCI expansion cards. The one I finally settled on was a five port model with a VIA chipset on it. Finding the drivers for it was a bit tricky, but after doing that, the little card is working like a champ.
I plugged a 16 gig SanDisk flash drive into one of the ports and I'm using that as a permanent data backup drive. That leaves me four more ports, for 'Whatever'.
Plus I have three on the front panel, plugged into those motherboard USB headers and one more on my Epson Workforce 500 printer.

Both a new XP-Pro install and a new Windows 8/CP install, picked up that VIA card with no problem.

So that's just one more option.

Good Luck,
The Doctor