14 May
2016
14 May
'16
12:29 p.m.
Hi all --
Got me an early MIPS workstation, an RC2030. I'm trying to track down a
keyboard and mouse for it. The keyboard connector uses an 8-pin DIN
connector. Anyone have any leads? (Or know what the pinouts and
protocol might be?)
Thanks,
Josh
14 May
14 May
2:27 p.m.
On 14/05/2016 20:29, Josh Dersch wrote:
Got me an early MIPS workstation, an RC2030. I'm
trying to track down a
keyboard and mouse for it. The keyboard connector uses an 8-pin DIN
connector. Anyone have any leads? (Or know what the pinouts and
protocol might be?)
I don't know, but having seen quite a few older keyboards I'd guess that
it's likely to be RS232 (+/- 12V) or RS423 (+/- 5V). Early SGIs and
some 68000 machines I've seen elsewhere were like that, so a voltmeter
might tell you something. Early SGIs, for example, were RS423 levels
600baud and up/down encoded (there's pinout and keycode tables in older
IRIX manpages).
--
Pete
15 May
15 May
1:18 a.m.
On 14 May 2016 at 20:29, Josh Dersch <derschjo at gmail.com> wrote:
Hi all --
Got me an early MIPS workstation, an RC2030. I'm trying to track down a
keyboard and mouse for it. The keyboard connector uses an 8-pin DIN
connector. Anyone have any leads? (Or know what the pinouts and protocol
might be?)
Quite a few of the mipsco boxes used PS/2 connectors, but that would
probably be a little less interesting :)
I suspect if you could upload a picture of the ports and send a link
to the list its likely someone may recognise it...
10:30 a.m.
On 5/14/16 12:29 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
Hi all --
Got me an early MIPS workstation, an RC2030. I'm trying to track down a keyboard and
mouse for it. The keyboard
connector uses an 8-pin DIN connector. Anyone have any leads? (Or know what the pinouts
and protocol might be?)
Thanks,
Josh
there is a picture of it here
https://books.google.com/books?id=IToEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT32&lpg=PT32&…
looks like an AT keyboard and Logitech (serial?) mouse
2:11 p.m.
On 5/15/16 10:30 AM, Al Kossow wrote:
On 5/14/16 12:29 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
You're right, that does look like your standard AT keyboard and Logitech
mouse. I tried an AT keyboard just a couple of minutes back and it's
close, but it doesn't work properly. The keyboard LEDs cycle while the
2030's running its (very lengthy) diagnostics but once I get to a
prompt, I get gibberish from it -- looks like the keyboard scancodes are
completely different. (Just for fun I tried an XT keyboard and that
doesn't work at all...)
It does give me a place to start hacking, though...
Thanks!
- Josh
Hi all --
Got me an early MIPS workstation, an RC2030. I'm trying to track down a keyboard and
mouse for it. The keyboard
connector uses an 8-pin DIN connector. Anyone have any leads? (Or know what the pinouts
and protocol might be?)
Thanks,
Josh
there is a picture of it here
https://books.google.com/books?id=IToEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT32&lpg=PT32&…
looks like an AT keyboard and Logitech (serial?) mouse
2:34 p.m.
On 15/05/2016 22:11, Josh Dersch wrote:
On 5/15/16 10:30 AM, Al Kossow wrote:
> looks like an AT keyboard and Logitech (serial?)
mouse
You're right, that does look like your standard AT
keyboard and Logitech
mouse. I tried an AT keyboard just a couple of minutes back and it's
close, but it doesn't work properly. The keyboard LEDs cycle while the
2030's running its (very lengthy) diagnostics but once I get to a
prompt, I get gibberish from it -- looks like the keyboard scancodes are
completely different. (Just for fun I tried an XT keyboard and that
doesn't work at all...)
If it's that close that it's safe to connect to a PC, you could
determine the scancodes by running "showkey -s" under linux. It might be
something like "Set 3" which is what SGIs used to use (and documented in
their manpages).
And I found a page somewhere (sorry, forgot where) that mentioned using
a Logitech Trackman on a RC2030 which worked "99% of the time" so a
fairly common mouse might work. Most of the Logitech mice I've seen
like the one in the picture Al found, were quadrature mice (X+, X-, Y+,
Y- and 2/3 button signals) but presumably there were serial mice in that
style too.
--
Pete
3:01 p.m.
On 5/15/16 2:34 PM, Pete Turnbull wrote:
On 15/05/2016 22:11, Josh Dersch wrote:
Thanks for the info, I'll see if I can track down a compatible mouse.
And scratch what I said about the keyboard -- recalling that there are
"standards" and then there are "standards" I grabbed a different AT
keyboard from the shelf and tried it, just in case. And it works
perfectly. So, it's a "standard" AT keyboard, but be careful which one
you choose :).
Thanks again,
Josh
On 5/15/16 10:30 AM, Al Kossow wrote:
> looks like an AT keyboard and Logitech
(serial?) mouse
You're right, that does look like your
standard AT keyboard and Logitech
mouse. I tried an AT keyboard just a couple of minutes back and it's
close, but it doesn't work properly. The keyboard LEDs cycle while the
2030's running its (very lengthy) diagnostics but once I get to a
prompt, I get gibberish from it -- looks like the keyboard scancodes are
completely different. (Just for fun I tried an XT keyboard and that
doesn't work at all...)
If it's that close that it's safe to connect to a PC, you could
determine the scancodes by running "showkey -s" under linux. It might
be something like "Set 3" which is what SGIs used to use (and
documented in their manpages).
And I found a page somewhere (sorry, forgot where) that mentioned
using a Logitech Trackman on a RC2030 which worked "99% of the time"
so a fairly common mouse might work. Most of the Logitech mice I've
seen like the one in the picture Al found, were quadrature mice (X+,
X-, Y+, Y- and 2/3 button signals) but presumably there were serial
mice in that style too.
5:13 p.m.
On 5/15/16 3:01 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
And it works perfectly. So, it's a
"standard" AT keyboard, but be careful which one you choose :).
What are the pinouts off the 8-pin connector?
I'm guessing the mouse uses the other pins.
Digging on the web, this has been asked with no replies for at least
10 years.
5:16 p.m.
Is there still an os on the disk?
The MAME guys might be interested in simulating it if you dump
the roms and the hd. It wasn't obvious from the picture in the
picture if the V50 had an eprom as well. I'm gussing the intel
40 pin part by the keyboard is an 8031?
On 5/15/16 5:13 PM, Al Kossow wrote:
On 5/15/16 3:01 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
And it works perfectly. So, it's a
"standard" AT keyboard, but be careful which one you choose :).
What are the pinouts off the 8-pin connector?
I'm guessing the mouse uses the other pins.
Digging on the web, this has been asked with no replies for at least
10 years.
5:40 p.m.
On 5/15/16 5:16 PM, Al Kossow wrote:
Is there still an os on the disk?
Yes, a kind
listmember had archived the QIC install media for MIPS
RISC/OS, I installed from that. When I got the machine, the system disk
was dead, and could not be coaxed back to life.
The MAME guys might be interested in simulating it if
you dump
the roms and the hd. It wasn't obvious from the picture in the
picture if the V50 had an eprom as well. I'm gussing the intel
40 pin part by the keyboard is an 8031?
I can double-check this week and dump the
ROMs. I'll also look at the
extra pins on the keyboard. I'll note that the jack is labeled just
"KEYBOARD." There is nothing labeled "Mouse" anywhere on this
thing...
- Josh
On 5/15/16 5:13 PM, Al Kossow wrote:
On 5/15/16 3:01 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
And it works perfectly. So, it's a
"standard" AT keyboard, but be careful which one you choose :).
What are the pinouts off the 8-pin connector?
I'm guessing the mouse uses the other pins.
Digging on the web, this has been asked with no replies for at least
10 years.
8:18 p.m.
I disassembled the RC2030 to get at the motherboard and spent some time
probing. This is a multi-layer board, quite thick, so tracing things
down has proven difficult. Two of the three extra pins on the DIN
connector for the keyboard are connected to a 74LS240, one as an input,
one as an output; these pass through the 74LS240 and are routed through
a pair of jumpers. Past this point I'm having a heck of a time figuring
out what they're connected to -- it's nothing obvious like the serial
controller. The third pin appears to be +5V.
I also found this note in the MIPS PROM Monitor Reference
(http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/mips/PRM-01-DOC_PROM_Monitor_Ref_Jun…):
"keyboard: Determines the type of keyboard used: MIPS (default) for the
UNIX-style keyboard and AT for the AT-style keyboard (2030 and RC3x30).
Default is AT for 4000 systems."
So it looks like there are a couple of different keyboard types; it's
possible that the UNIX-style keyboard uses all 8 pins, though that seems
unlikely.
Another interesting note regarding the "console" variable when set to
"a" (though perhaps not applicable at all to the RC2030:
" Enables all console devices. Do not use this value on a Rx3x30 system
with a mouse attached to tty(0)."
tty(0) is one of two serial ports on the rear. That would seem to
indicate a serial mouse -- I don't know whether the note about RX3x30
systems means there was no serial option on the RC2030, or that this
option simply wouldn't cause an issue with a serial mouse on the RC2030.
I suppose the easiest way to solve this would be to find an old Logitech
mouse and just try it. I need to get the X software packages loaded on
this thing first...
- Josh
On 5/15/16 5:40 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
On 5/15/16 5:16 PM, Al Kossow wrote:
Is there still an os on the disk?
Yes, a
kind listmember had archived the QIC install media for MIPS
RISC/OS, I installed from that. When I got the machine, the system
disk was dead, and could not be coaxed back to life.
The MAME guys might be interested in simulating
it if you dump
the roms and the hd. It wasn't obvious from the picture in the
picture if the V50 had an eprom as well. I'm gussing the intel
40 pin part by the keyboard is an 8031?
I can double-check this week and dump the
ROMs. I'll also look at the
extra pins on the keyboard. I'll note that the jack is labeled just
"KEYBOARD." There is nothing labeled "Mouse" anywhere on this
thing...
- Josh
On 5/15/16 5:13 PM, Al Kossow wrote:
On 5/15/16 3:01 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
And it works perfectly. So, it's a
"standard" AT keyboard, but be careful which one you choose :).
What are the pinouts off the 8-pin connector?
I'm guessing the mouse uses the other pins.
Digging on the web, this has been asked with no replies for at least
10 years.
16 May
16 May
1:02 a.m.
And I've placed EPROM images at:
http://yahozna.dyndns.org/scratch/mips/
There is not a separate ROM set for the V50.
- Josh
On 5/15/16 8:18 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
I disassembled the RC2030 to get at the motherboard
and spent some
time probing. This is a multi-layer board, quite thick, so tracing
things down has proven difficult. Two of the three extra pins on the
DIN connector for the keyboard are connected to a 74LS240, one as an
input, one as an output; these pass through the 74LS240 and are routed
through a pair of jumpers. Past this point I'm having a heck of a
time figuring out what they're connected to -- it's nothing obvious
like the serial controller. The third pin appears to be +5V.
I also found this note in the MIPS PROM Monitor Reference
(http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/mips/PRM-01-DOC_PROM_Monitor_Ref_Jun…):
"keyboard: Determines the type of keyboard used: MIPS (default) for
the UNIX-style keyboard and AT for the AT-style keyboard (2030 and
RC3x30). Default is AT for 4000 systems."
So it looks like there are a couple of different keyboard types; it's
possible that the UNIX-style keyboard uses all 8 pins, though that
seems unlikely.
Another interesting note regarding the "console" variable when set to
"a" (though perhaps not applicable at all to the RC2030:
" Enables all console devices. Do not use this value on a Rx3x30
system with a mouse attached to tty(0)."
tty(0) is one of two serial ports on the rear. That would seem to
indicate a serial mouse -- I don't know whether the note about RX3x30
systems means there was no serial option on the RC2030, or that this
option simply wouldn't cause an issue with a serial mouse on the RC2030.
I suppose the easiest way to solve this would be to find an old
Logitech mouse and just try it. I need to get the X software packages
loaded on this thing first...
- Josh
On 5/15/16 5:40 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
On 5/15/16 5:16 PM, Al Kossow wrote:
Is there still an os on the disk?
Yes, a
kind listmember had archived the QIC install media for MIPS
RISC/OS, I installed from that. When I got the machine, the system
disk was dead, and could not be coaxed back to life.
The MAME guys might be interested in simulating
it if you dump
the roms and the hd. It wasn't obvious from the picture in the
picture if the V50 had an eprom as well. I'm gussing the intel
40 pin part by the keyboard is an 8031?
I can double-check this week and dump the
ROMs. I'll also look at
the extra pins on the keyboard. I'll note that the jack is labeled
just "KEYBOARD." There is nothing labeled "Mouse" anywhere on this
thing...
- Josh
On 5/15/16 5:13 PM, Al Kossow wrote:
On 5/15/16 3:01 PM, Josh Dersch wrote:
> And it works perfectly. So, it's a
> "standard" AT keyboard, but be careful which one you choose :).
>
What are the pinouts off the 8-pin connector?
I'm guessing the mouse uses the other pins.
Digging on the web, this has been asked with no replies for at least
10 years.
12:04 p.m.
On 5/16/16 1:02 AM, Josh Dersch wrote:
> I disassembled the RC2030 to get at the
motherboard and spent some time probing.
If you get a chance, an couple of MB pictures would be nice.
I just to pics and dumped the proms from my RC3230. uploaded to pdf/mips/M20
What pins does the AT keyboard use on your DIN-8?
1:05 a.m.
On Sun, 15 May 2016, Josh Dersch wrote:
And scratch what I said about the keyboard --
recalling that there are
"standards" and then there are "standards" I grabbed a different AT
keyboard
from the shelf and tried it, just in case. And it works perfectly. So, it's
a "standard" AT keyboard, but be careful which one you choose :).
There's the XT keyboard (83 keys), the AT keyboard (84 keys; same as XT
plus <SysReq>) and the PS/2 keyboard (originally 101/102 keys, but other
variants were later produced; this added the cursor pad, editing keys,
<F11>, <F12>, etc.). The XT and AT keyboards have a different fixed scan
code set each. For backwards compatibility with existing PC software the
i8042 microcontroller used on original PC/AT systems to interface the
keyboard translated AT scan codes on the fly to their XT equivalents;
there's little hassle here, because the key set is almost the same. This
translation can be disabled by software with a suitable command issued to
the i8042, to reveal the native scan code set.
With the PS/2 keyboard things turned different, the keyboard has 3 scan
code sets to choose from. Again for backwards compatibility, it powers up
in the AT scan code mode. Newly added keys are sent as multibyte codes
with a 0xe0 prefix, which legacy software can ignore and still yield
reasonable resultr; there are other quirks as well. Software can switch
the keyboard into one of the other 2 modes, either XT or native PS/2, with
a suitable command issued to the keyboard itself. For sensible results
translation in the i8042 has to be disabled as well if using these modes.
The XT mode is nothing fancy, again multibyte codes with a 0xe0 prefix
are used and the same quirks are present, except XT scan codes are
otherwise sent.
The native PS/2 mode on the other hand presents a uniform single-byte
scan code set across all keys, and the quirks are gone too. Unlike in the
other modes individual keys can have their press, release and typematic
events independently programmed. This is why some operating systems chose
to reprogram the keyboard to use this mode.
However, as usually, some hardware vendors did not feel compelled to
implement this feature set correctly in keyboard firmware, because all
they're cared was DOS/Windows compatibility and that software didn't
bother to fiddle with the keyboard. Consequently some supposedly
PS/2-compatible keyboards are hardwired to the AT mode. Worse yet, they
return the success code for scan code switch commands, and happily ignore
them, so flexible software can't figure out what's happening. And of
course some i8042 firmware implementers "forgot" to implement the
translation-disable command as well -- again with no means to detect the
situation.
So it looks to me like the first keyboard you've tried just suffers from
crippled firmware.
FWIW,
Maciej
1:27 a.m.
On Mon, May 16, 2016 at 1:05 AM, Maciej W. Rozycki <macro at linux-mips.org>
wrote:
On Sun, 15 May 2016, Josh Dersch wrote:
Well, in this case, I suspect the firmware in the MIPS -- the first
keyboard I tried was the original, official, IBM AT 84-key keyboard which
I'd expect to do things right :).
- Josh
And scratch what I said about the keyboard --
recalling that there are
"standards" and then there are "standards" I grabbed a different AT
keyboard
from the shelf and tried it, just in case. And
it works perfectly. So,
it's
a "standard" AT keyboard, but be
careful which one you choose :).
<..snipped..>
So it looks to me like the first keyboard you've tried just suffers from
crippled firmware.
FWIW,
Maciej
4:58 a.m.
On Mon, 16 May 2016, Josh Dersch wrote:
Then I think it's likely the machine actually wants a true PS/2 keyboard
in its native scan code set 3. So there's nothing wrong with your IBM AT
keyboard, and neither with your MIPSCO box, except that the two pieces are
incompatible with each other. And software doesn't bother to detect the
incompatibility -- as I recall an AT and a PS/2 keyboard can be told apart
by issuing the right command or sequence of commands to the device and
checking the response. I'd have to dig out my old code/notes to find the
details as I did such stuff back in mid 1990s.
Congrats on the trophy BTW -- as a MIPS person really I do recognise much
value in it and I'm glad such a system survived. I wonder how many RC6260
machines, if any at all, are still around. Live specimens, preferably.
Maciej
So it looks
to me like the first keyboard you've tried just suffers from
crippled firmware.
Well, in this case, I suspect the firmware in the MIPS -- the first
keyboard I tried was the original, official, IBM AT 84-key keyboard which
I'd expect to do things right :).
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15 comments
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participants (5)
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abs＠absd.org -
aek＠bitsavers.org -
derschjo＠gmail.com -
macro＠linux-mips.org -
pete＠dunnington.plus.com