I don't know what voodoo magic you guys did but I cleared CMOS and set both the keyboard and rear USB power jumpers to Disabled (so no +5vsb) and magically the rear USB ports are working fine now on my original TUSL2-C board.

I'll have to try the same thing on the second board but this brings me to another question - are there any functional differences to the revisions?

Original board has the onboard audio hardware and is Rev 1.04 but the second board lacks that audio hardware and is Rev 1.03. I can't physically see anything different other than the missing audio bits.

Anywho - looks like it's time to swap back to this beast and finally play some games - thanks again for the suggestions everyone!

I always configure not to use 5Vsb if there's jumpers on the motherboards I come across. This was for waking up the computer from sleep using Vsb to keep usb device alive, which is taken from the Vsb wire from ATX power supply. Not enough current.

Cheers,