The motherboard manual, page 2-36, item #9 discusses the front panel connector. The Antec P180B uses a 10 pin AAFP connector, with individual leads hanging out in case a motherboard might not support an AAFP connector. I was tempted to cut all those leads off, but for now I just wrapped electrical tape around them so they don't hang all over the place. BTW, pin 1 of the board-mounted AAFP connector is as shown in the diagram to the right. If you look at the motherboard oriented so the back panel connectors are on the left, pin 1 is the lower right pin. The Antec's AAFP connector highlights the blocked off pin with white; orient the connector so the blocked off pin is at the upper left when plugging it in.

Here is another discussion, with pinouts.

Card reader

The 3.5" Atech Flash Xm-4U 11-in-1 USB 2.0 Black internal card reader required the short rails provided with the Antec case and clicked into place easily, but I have no idea of how to connect it to the motherboard. Lead3 writes "This company sells plastic headers that you can use to replace the individual connectors for the front panel." Header connectors and instructions. These aren't needed for the ASUS P5W/Antec P180B front pantel, but might be useful for the card reader?

Floppy Drive

The only externally accessible 3.5" bay was used by card reader so I put the 3.5" floppy drive in the top drive bay.  Because I had not purchased a 5.25" tray for the 3.5" floppy drive, it is not fastened in place.  I have a 3.5" bracket mount for a 5.25" bay, but it has no bezel and doesn't click into place when inserted. Antec's tech support said that they have these bezels and trays for 3.5" drives that fit in 5.25" bays, and include them with some of their cases, but they are not available for purchase. Antec suggested I look elsewhere. I indicated that I had found the LIAN LI MF-515B 5.25" to 3.5" Converter but others who had purchased it had stated that it must mount from the inside. The Antec 180B case requires drives to mount from the front, however. Antec was unable to help me any further, and again I am at an impasse with them. What is most frustrating to me is that apparently Antec does manufacture such a part, but they won't make it available to me.

DVD drives

I purchased two identical NEC DVD R/W drives with IDE/ATAPI interfaces.  I had originally intended to set them both to cable select.  The ASUS IDE cable is just barely long enough to reach the drives if they are placed on the second and third 5.25" drive bays.

There are two IDE controllers on the motherboard, one of which (the black JMicron IDE connector) does not support ATAPI - see the manual, section 2.7.2 item 2 (page 2-31), there's a note at the bottom. Connect ATAPI IDE devices to the blue ICH7R IDE connector instead.

Kensek writes:

"First of all connect your CD & DVD Reader/Writers to the Blue Primary IDE Connector.

Run your old Hard Drive from the Black Primary EIDE Connector.
Connect your new SATA Drive to SATA 1.

You should be aware that on ASUS Mobo's your HDD's will show up as Third IDE Master and Third IDE Slave.  Your CD/DVD Reader/Writers will show up as Primaries."

Chris writes:

There are 3 settings for the JMicron.

Make sure it's set to (enabled)(basic)(disabled).  The last disabled is the BOOT ROM.  Once you have your OS installed disable the BOOT ROM and it won't show that searching for drives-press any button to continue screen.

Leave the first option enabled, or you wont be able to read cd's.

As you will read later on, the ASUS P5B does not boot from PATA drives if there is a SATA hard drive.  I verified this with two Linux boot CDs and a Windows installation CD.  My first solution was to install the operating system from a USB drive - pressing F8 while the system is booting allows you to select the boot device. 

I tried converting the IDE (aka PATA) DVD R/W drives to SATA for only a few dollars and an increase in the tangle of wires (not all the wires are attached in the right-hand photo below.)  The instructions say that drives attached in this way must be set to master, which is how they are configured from the factory. Didn't get these to work.

Video card

Installing the XFX 7300GT 256MB PVT73EUDJ3 dual DVI video card couldn't be easier - it just popped into place into the primary PCI Express 16x slot. I connected a monitor to each DVI output, and turned one sideways. After extending the Windows desktop to the second monitor, I set the primary monitor to 1600x1200 and the secondary monitor to 1200x1600. It's great to do word processing and to read documents in portrait mode and to do other activities in landscape mode.

I downloaded a driver update from nVidia, since XFX indicated that the nVidia drivers are more recent.

Parallel Port

This has become my biggest headache with this computer.  I've tried two parallel port cards ( SIIG CyberParallel PCI Part #: JJ-P00112-S5 and Rosewill Single Parallel (SPP/PS2/EPP/ECP) Universal PCI card Model RC-302 ) but cannot get either of them to enable ECP mode.  I only found one thread in the ASUS forum has on the subject.

Rosewill RC-302

The Rosewill RC-302 apparently uses NmDosIn.exe to enable ECP mode. I used a DOS boot disk from Windows 98 and was apparantly able to configure the card in ECP mode. I then booted Windows XP and was able to install a ECP driver (by NetMos, provided by RoseWill.)

The Rosewill tech support page says it is 'down for maintenance' and suggests customers send a message to feedback@rosewill.com. I did that, and discovered that my email message bounced back.  I resent the tech support request to techsupport@rosewill.com and got a confirmation email back.  Maybe I'll get a human's help?

SIIG CyberParallelPCI

Here is the tech support request I sent to help@siig.com:

Problem Description:
Entered on 10/22/2006 at 10:26:47 by mslinn@mslinn.com:
I need to enable ECP mode. The driver on the CD and the downloadable driver do not provide this facility. I note that
http://siig.com/faq.asp?faqid=10050119 describes how to enable ECP mode, however the link provided on that page
(http://www.siig.com/drivers/para-ser_pci_driver.html) for CB20XSU is not valid.

I found a copy of CB20XSU for an earlier revison of this board (v3) at http://www.siig.com/driver.asp?catid=72&pid=150. I used a DOS boot disk from Windows 98 and saw this message:

C:\>Cb20xsu.exe
PCI Direct Accees is used.

SIIG Cyber20x Serial/Parallel PCI v2.50
(C) Copyright 1997-2001, by SIIG, Inc.
All rights reserved.
There is no any SIIG serial/parallel card.

I also tried the software for v4 of the hardware. As you can see, it does not work either:

C:\>nmdosin -config:lpt=epp
NetMos DOS installer version 1.00.024 dated 19-DEC-2001.

PCI Services Not Available

How can I enable ECP mode?

Ticket Information Data:

Here is the response I got:

Entered on 10/23/2006 at 10:19:19 by Tim Pham:
Hello,
You will not be able to change the port mode with our card.
This is Windows XP limitation issue.
 
Tim

Not very helpful! I responded back 10/24/06:

CB20XSU.EXE was not provided in the driver software for v5 of the card, so I had obtained it from the v4 software download.  Is CB20XSU.EXE not compatible with v5?  If not, what software and operating system must be used?  The product documentation clearly states that ECP mode is possible with this card.

No response yet.

I also asked ASUS tech support on 10/25/06.

Uptech UT232P Combo

I obtained an Uptech UT232P Combo card direct from Taiwan. This card features 2 RS232 ports and 1 parallel ports. Although the product literature is entirely in Mandarin, the installation routine is in English. This product had the best installation routine of the parallel port cards that I tried. THis card uses a Netmos 9835 PCI multi I/O controller chip.

The card immediately installed itself with an ECP mode driver, but again my external device would not work.