blackrock: Tektronix XP338 Xterminal

blackrock is a Tektronix XP338 X terminal, with a 19" colour monitor. I now have both software and a cable to connect the monitor (thanks to Harald Kueller for generously sending me a cable, and apologies for not putting in the accented characters in his name :-)).

There's also information about these systems at this wiki that somebody's made, including a probably better pinout of the ERGO cable.

Information I have found: the monitor is a Tektronix model 119-4271-00, which is a fixed frequency monitor which can do 1280x1024 at a horizontal frequency of 69kHz and a vertical frequency of 72Hz. I deduce it to be sync-on-green because it's only got 3BNC connections (plus another 3BNC out for daisychaining another monitor).

blackrock's CPU is a MIPS R3xxx series variant (possibly some embedded variant, since I couldn't see a MIPS chip on the PCB anywhere). It's got a TI 34020 graphics processor. Curiously enough, I believe this is the same graphics processor used by the rather different wirenth.

It apparently has two 9 pin serial ports, as well as both AUI and 10base2 ethernet connections. There's also a 15 pin male D connector ("ERGO") which is a combined video/keyboard/mouse cable.

Here is the pinout for the ERGO cable:

Connection to base unit: the cable has a 15pin D female connection; this is the numbering, looking into the cable:

 -------------------------
 \ 8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1 /
  \ 15 14 13 12 11 10  9 /
   ----------------------

Connections for keyboard and mouse are both female 6-pin PS2 style connectors. Experiment shows that a PS2 keyboard works fine; presumably so would a mouse, but I haven't tested that. Again, pinout, looking into the cable:

 
  6 u 5
 4     3
  2   1

There are also 3 BNC connectors for red, green and blue.

The cable appears to be wired up like this, where Tn refers to a pin on the terminal connection, Kn to one on the keyboard socket and Mn to one on the mouse socket:

  T1 -- RED BNC
  T2 -- GREEN BNC
  T3 -- BLUE BNC
  T4 -- N/C
  T5 -- K5
  T6 -- K1
  T7 -- K3
  T8 -- M5 (MOUSECLK?)
  T9, T10, T11 -- BNC GROUNDS (all 3 T pins wired together)
  T12 -- M4 (MOUSE+5V?)
  T13 -- M3 (MOUSEGND?)
  T14 -- N/C
  T15 -- M1 (MOUSEDATA?)

Like firestone, blackrock has a 'minerals and gemstones' name because it was originally at the office where I worked at that time.

Acquisition

• Date: August 1999

Images

None as yet...