How to Make a 9 Pin Male Usb to Dual Usb Cable

This instructable is for the people that have all of the 9pin usb ports on your motherboard used up and have a device like a media card reader, or addon device and need a custom cable to connect the device to the outside USB ports on your computer.


sorry about the low quality pictures, I need to upgrade my digital camera.

I have the unfortunate task of trying to get this old as hell media card reader to work with my desktop after I had installed Windows 8 on it. this card reader is so old that it does not have compatibility for windows 7 let alone windows 8. 

I found out the hard way that this device is not compatable with either of the boot styles of windows 7 or 8 and caused a +5min time for my system to boot, I will give the solution for this at the end of this instructable if you have old outdated hardware like this.

you will need

a soldering iron
heat shrink tubing (different sizes)
two usb cables ( I used two old printer cables that I had lying around)
lighter
razor blade to cut cables and wire
9 pin male usb header (had one laying around, you can buy one at radioshack or electronics store)
printout of the 9 pin usb pinout

use you razor to cut the outer housing of the 9pin usb headder in half. make sure that you do not cut the inner braided shielding. 

next grab a pair of wire cutters ( I used my mini tool to do this) and cut an end of both of your usb cables off. leave several inches on the end that you cut off so that you can reuse the end if needed for another project.

now take your razor blad and cut down the center of both usb cables making sure not to cut the outer layer of braided shielding on each of them.

now pull the braided layer of shielding back and down the cable foe each cable.

now there should be another layer of foil like material wrapped around the wires that you need to get to. unwrap this layer and make sure that it stays away from the exposed wires you need to work on (use tape if you need to).

now take your pinout and start with the top row of pins (it will have five pins not four) 

start with the red wire (if you have a usb headder where all of the wires are black, like the lower row of mine, just remember to look at the pinout below and you will see that the red wires are the top wires furthest from the empty pin, this port will not have a hole for a pin to fit in it at all)

take the red wire from each side and strip both ends twist the wires together and break out your soldering iron and solder both ends together .

make sure that you put a piece of heat shrink tubing on one end so you can apply some heat to the soldered wire. 

do this for each wire, if you are on the row with the fifth wire just use a small piece of electrical tape this is a secondary ground wire and you do not have to connect it 

now repeat the process for the second row and usb cable 

when you are done re-wrap the layer of shielding around the wires (make sure  you cut off enough of the wire on the header side so that the shielding fits around it as well) followed by the braided layer of shielding, outter layer that you cut in half, and then some heat shrink tubing over that. 

do this for each cable.

I did not have heat shrink tubing big enough to go over both cables not to mention the plastic header housing so I just used electrical tape for that. 

this is you finished product.

just plug the male end of your cable into the female end of our hardware/device and plug the two outer usb ends of the cables into two empty usb ports on the back of the computer.  

for this media card reader for some reason it did not work when I just plugged in the two cables to two ports that were on the same usb header on my motherboard. I had to plug one into the back usb port and the other cable into the front port for the device to power up and the computer to recognize on my computer. but when I did this it works like a charm. Like I stated before this device is NOT compatible  with either boot styles of win 7 or 8 and I do not want to wait +5 mins on top of my normal boot time just to have this working. so when I am not using it, I unplug one of the usb cables. when I need to use it I just plug both cables back in and it works every time.


I think later on when I get some more free time I will make an on and off switch so that both cables can stay plugged in and when I need it I can just flip the switch on or off. let me know if this can be done