I have no more USB headers on my MOBO,
Get a USB hub... a powered hub if necessary.
This alone is probably the best solution providing you can
get the readers to work with your board or add-on pci card
mentioned below.
and the usb card reader I just got
would not work on my MOBO.
Are you sure it is a reader-mobo interaction? Most often,
it's either the reader drivers and/or windows interaction
(or lack thereof) causing a problem. What specific
motherboard and reader, can you link to their product pages
or provide more info?
I don't want to run any cable out the back of the
comp and plug it into a USB port on the back.
OK?
Why not if all else fails?
Not elequent, but it'd do the job.
Another option i'd mentioned above briefly is a PCI, USB
card to provide more ports. Some have internal USB socket
or pin header for different uses, though I don't recall
which brands do at the moment- but Newegg.com has some good
pictures, it should be obvious on the pics which ones do.
Is there any internal card reader I can get that will work some other way
than USB? What about IDE? I have plenty of those.
Yes you can get a Compact Flash (only, no other formats),
IDE adapter that is a bare card or that sits in a front bay.
Two biggest problems are you cannot insert or remove the
card while the system is running- ONLY while it's turned
off, and the obvious, it only reads Compact Flash.
These are more often used for mission-specific, like
embedded systems to use CF in lieu of a hard drive. IIRC,
there are other more expensive adapters like that that will
make other memory formats emulate CF, but they still have
the limitation of having system turned off prior to plugin
or removal... due to the IDE bus, not the reader itself.
If worst came to worst, I supposed I could get a usb controller card with a
usb header on it, but I really did not want to take up my last pci slot.
.... then get the hub & figure out why your mobo's ports
aren't working with it... does the reader work with other
systems so you know it's not faulty? What operating system?