In message <5itng6d3a972jajct963aj78rp7mpvn7kt@4ax.com> mm
<NOPSAMmm2005@bigfoot.com> was claimed to have wrote:

>What is an internal USB jack for?
>
>Running XP SP3, using an ASUS mobo that had only usb1.1, so I bought a
>USB2 card a few months ago and everything is fine.
>
>It has another USB jack on the card, not the mounting bracket, and
>since it's hard to reach the back of the computer and the side cover
>was open, I inserted a flash drive into the port. Everything stopped,
>the cursor wouldn't move, the keys didn't work, the icon for a USB
>device didn't show up.
>
>It's possible my belly hit the keyboard :-( , but I would expect
>things to soon get back to normal if that were the problem.
>
>Had to use Reset button to warm start the computer.
>
>Now I'm afraid to plug anything into that internal port?/jack.
>
>Documentation with the card didn't even mention it existed. I wasn't
>sure it was even a jack until I read something that made a vague
>reference to an internal jack.
>
>What is it for?

Typically internal USB jacks are no different than external ones. I've
added internal USB ports to my own system for years, typically to add
Bluetooth adapters or similar to a desktop.

For many moons I used a card reader that had a standard USB cable
connector on it rather than connecting directly to motherboard USB
headers. The instructions suggested that you snake the cable through
the case, out the back and connect it to an external USB port. I had
this card reader connected to an internal USB port that I added as well.

It's possible that your USB card used a similar formfactor for something
else, but honestly, I can't imagine why they'd bother with a USB header,
it would make more sense to skip the connector and go with bare pins if
the port had some other purpose.

It is also possible that the internal USB port wasn't a dedicated port
but rather that it electrically shared pins with an external port (in
other words, the card's chipset might support 4 ports, the card might
have 4 on the back and 1 inside, allowing you to use 4-external or
3-external + 1-internal) -- I've got a SATA card that "shares" one of
the internal SATA ports with the ESATA slot on the back in this fashion.
If you connected two devices to one pair of hybrid ports the results
would be unpredictable.