I don't know, if can be damaged the board directly, but in the case of another pinout, the device (usually the mouse) does not work correctly or even doesn't work at all..

There are two types of wirings - staggered or sequential.

On the external port side, when you lift away the plastic, you can see two types of wirings:
12345
6789
OR
13579
2468

And one fits with your board and other doesn't. To confirm, which way you need it to be, search for the ground pin. That's enough to identify it.

With soldering iron, you can modify the cable easily. 😉

My motherboard guide says:
1 - Data carrier detect
2 - Receive data
3 - Transmit data
4 - Data transmit ready
5 - Signal Ground
6 - Ready to receive data
7 - Request to send data
8 - Clear to send
9 - Ring indicator

So the ground pin is number 5 on the motherboard. If I understand correctly, the external cable should then also have pin 5 as ground, but it is possible that it is "mapped" to pin 9 in your example.

Edit: I have measured with a multi-meter, see following post.

Using a multi-meter on the cable itself I was able to measure the layout without having to remove the plastic.

The result:

"10 pin IDC" --> "9 pin d-sub connector"
1 --> 1
2 --> 3
3 --> 5
4 --> 7
5 --> 9
Etc...

So the layout appears to be:
13579
2468

But again, how do I know if that matches my motherboard?

Ground pin is 5 according to the motherboard guide, but what does that mean exactly? My cable's 5 is pin 9 on the d-sub connector. Is that wrong? Should that be also the 5th pin?

This is a 'guide' that shows the difference between the 2 main implementations.

PARKE wrote on 2021-04-27, 17:36:

This is a 'guide' that shows the difference between the 2 main implementations.
DTK3a.jpg

Thanks! So my cable is clearly the new AT/Everex type, but I don’t know yet my motherboard. I guess I will have to check with the multi meter what is the ground pin.

AT/Everex is vastly more common. I do not believe you pose any risk to the board if it is wrong. Just hook it up and it will 90% just work

maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-04-27, 23:15:

AT/Everex is vastly more common. I do not believe you pose any risk to the board if it is wrong. Just hook it up and it will 90% just work

Thanks! I will give it a shot.