deskthority

Much thanks to hwood34 for selling me this exceedingly hard to document piece. Anyway enough of the formalities.

While this may LOOK like a 5291 "Bigfoot", the internals are totally different along with different legends. The best I can tell it cam from the IBM 5324 system. There seems to be very few images of this system let alone of the keyboard.

I will post a teaser pic here and then a link to the album on flickr
Apparently this forum is more restrictive than GH on attachment sizes so just check the album for full size shots

keyboard pr0n located inside here

https://www.flickr.com/photos/129328866 ... 745488066/

technical info in chapter 3 here

http://www.nf6x.net/wp/wp-content/uploa ... lume-1.pdf

The end goal is to make this thing work over USB while keeping 100% stock looks including the huge plug at the end of the cable. https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=56 ... msg1283409 Bottom pic in the OP shows the plug. I have zero issue cutting a hole into my PC case for the mate to that plug and building the converter/controller inside my PC.

You can always use

What distinguishes this, then, from the Bigfoot?

Muirium wrote: ↑You can always use

What distinguishes this, then, from the Bigfoot?

From what DFJ has told me from the pictures (I am not an electronics guy) this has its only controller where the BigFoot does not. Plus this does not have the 3 stage feet, and different legends.

Right. An onboard controller, like Kishsavers, XTs and so many Model Fs; instead of the curious Bigfoot which has no brain at all…

Muirium wrote: ↑Right. An onboard controller, like Kishsavers, XTs and so many Model Fs; instead of the curious Bigfoot which has no brain at all…

Correct

IMG_7723 by christopher.hurlbut, on Flickr

Weird, looks like it's in two parts?



The square silver topped chip (in the picture you linked of the underside) is IBM's typical analog heart in all its capsense controllers. Beamspring and F controllers all have those. Usually, though, the PCB simply hooks up to the "pad card" (the main PCB where the capsense pads are, behind the buckling springs). This looks like something else is going on up there in Bigfoot country…

Muirium wrote: ↑Weird, looks like it's in two parts?



The square silver topped chip (in the picture you linked of the underside) is IBM's typical analog heart in all its capsense controllers. Beamspring and F controllers all have those. Usually, though, the PCB simply hooks up to the "pad card" (the main PCB where the capsense pads are, behind the buckling springs). This looks like something else is going on up there in Bigfoot country…

Yeah that is the daughter board. Not sure what is going on there. Though dfj from GH irc feels that the voltage regulation among some other things is going on on that daughter board

Beautiful keyboard. There is no doubt about who is in charge when that keyboard is being used!

You probably wouldn't need to cut apart your PC to use the connector.

It looks like a DB-25. They widely sold "DB-25 connector on a slot cover" to go with I/O cards in the pre-ATX era. Get one of those, pop out the original connector, replace with one you've wired into an adapter, and off you go. For maximum cleanliness, wire the adapter to a motherboard USB header so there's no evidence of it outside the closed case.

Hak Foo. Yeah I was planning on doing it with a PCI slot connector, I was just stating I would be willing to put another hole in the case if need be. I have a Silverstone FT-02 so I have a couple options for that if I wanted to go that route. I will be starting a build log over at GH. For those that don't know I am Melvang over there and on the GH irc channel.

I will be posting a link here to that thread as well when it gets rolling.

Build log / help request on getting this up and running on USB has been started over at GH.

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=66801.0

Unfortunately, this variant uses the 8-channel controller chip 8273565 (the square silver chip), so Soarer's controller can't be used with this (see his post here: https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=50 ... msg1148867 ).

I don't think there's a converter yet that can convert the signals transmitted through this cable. You will have to find information about the protocol or try to reverse-engineer it. The pin assignments, scan codes and information on page 3-19 of the manual are certainly helpful for this, but that's only a start. When you have that, you can maybe write a converter that runs on e.g. a Teensy or Arduino. You will need a voltage level conversion in your converter, too, since this seems to work with 12V, while modern microcontrollers and USB work with 5V.

really nice find Rotti. But its too small to be a whale! This is more whale size:

Halvar wrote: ↑Unfortunately, this variant uses the 8-channel controller chip 8273565 (the square silver chip), so Soarer's controller can't be used with this (see his post here: https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=50 ... msg1148867 ).

I don't think there's a converter yet that can convert the signals transmitted through this cable. You will have to find information about the protocol or try to reverse-engineer it. The pin assignments, scan codes and information on page 3-19 of the manual are certainly helpful for this, but that's only a start. When you have that, you can maybe write a converter that runs on e.g. a Teensy or Arduino. You will need a voltage level conversion in your converter, too, since this seems to work with 12V, while modern microcontrollers and USB work with 5V.

Good catch with the 8 channel capsense controller. I remember seeing that post in my travels of explorying Soarer's firmware enviroment. Though I haven't used it yet.

What do you think the chances are that 5V would work but they just used 12 due to availability?

seebart wrote: ↑really nice find Rotti. But its too small to be a whale! This is more whale size:

NSjt5ul.jpg

That is beam spring correct? I think I remember that layout when I was digging for info on this particular piece. I liked the white whale/moby click reference due to the relative size and lack of info on this. I think I found 2 pictures outside DT and GH environments.

yes I believe it is beam spring and called "great white" by some.

It's definitely a beam spring from an IBM display writer. The last, or one of the last beam spring keyboards to be produced. On topic, its sad that soarers converter will not work as I'm sure that would be far easier than reverse engineering. Glad there are people way smarter than I on these forums.

Yup, Great Whites are pretty big.


http://deskthority.net/wiki/IBM_Displaywriter

But that's only the second biggest discrete keyboard I've ever seen. The largest one is much bigger…

I've been looking all over for a Displaywriter but it's very rare to see them go on sale.

faceyourfaces wrote: ↑I've been looking all over for a Displaywriter but it's very rare to see them go on sale.

not sure where you are from but there is one on ebay for $200.00
[url]http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-Displa ... 3399b5dd33[/url]

there is also a full display writer system for 2500 BIN

faceyourfaces wrote: ↑I've been looking all over for a Displaywriter but it's very rare to see them go on sale.

You may also get one with Spanish layout here:
http://www.ebay.es/itm/TECLADO-DE-ORDEN ... 5b01d69fe9

The space bar is not broken

Touch_It wrote: ↑

faceyourfaces wrote: ↑I've been looking all over for a Displaywriter but it's very rare to see them go on sale.

not sure where you are from but there is one on ebay for $200.00
[url]http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-Displa ... 3399b5dd33[/url]

I saw that listing, but it's too overpriced IMO. Look at how much this one sold for in October:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-2682678-Dis ... 1136375477

idollar wrote: ↑
You may also get one with Spanish layout here:
http://www.ebay.es/itm/TECLADO-DE-ORDEN ... 5b01d69fe9

The space bar is not broken

I wouldn't mind the Spanish layout but I can't imagine the purchase would be worth it after shipping to the U.S.

Fair enough, I agree it is probably over priced. Figured I would throw it out there, some people have deep pockets and wouldn't mind paying vs waiting.

Coming back to the subject of this thread ....

I am very interested in this topic. This is one of the layouts that I guess that will match my taste. I am seriously considering getting one of these boards.

This is my understanding that I have posted here also:

• Keyboards with the with a 4-channel controller chip 5119699
  
  • This one can be driven by the Soarer's Keyboard Controller firmware. Reference
    This solution here consists on disconnecting the cable from the IBM PCB and connect a teensy with the controller software that will drive the 51196699.
  Keyboards with the with a 8-channel controller chip 8273565
  
  • This one cannot be driven by the Soarer's Keyboard Controller firmware. Unfortunately even if we would like to extend his software, we cannot as we do not have the source. Reference

In all cases, it should be possible to replace the original PCBs and use the Model-F-USB-Rev2 controller from xwhatsit.

Is this summary correct ?

idollar wrote: ↑Coming back to the subject of this thread ....

I am very interested in this topic. This is one of the layouts that I guess that will match my taste. I am seriously considering getting one of these boards.

This is my understanding that I have posted here also:

• Keyboards with the with a 4-channel controller chip 5119699
  
  • This one can be driven by the Soarer's Keyboard Controller firmware. Reference
    This solution here consists on disconnecting the cable from the IBM PCB and connect a teensy with the controller software that will drive the 51196699.
  Keyboards with the with a 8-channel controller chip 8273565
  
  • This one cannot be driven by the Soarer's Keyboard Controller firmware. Unfortunately even if we would like to extend his software, we cannot as we do not have the source. Reference

In all cases, it should be possible to replace the original PCBs and use the Model-F-USB-Rev2 controller from xwhatsit.

Is this summary correct ?

To my knowledge you are correct. Another option is to replace the internals with a standard XT. However, I do want to go the extra mile and build up this one. I am currently in the process of reverse engineering the circuit with the guidance of dfj from the geekhack irc channel. The tough part is when I started this all had was a radio shack multimeter. Dfj has talked me into building a teensy based logic analyzer using code that I believe soarer has developed.

Current progress:

At this point it appears that the supply voltage for this board is +12 and it then gets stepped down on the daughter board inside the keyboard. From here it goes to a couple chips on the daughter board which is referred to as an "adapter card" by the service manual I have found. From there it goes to the actual keyboard PCB that has the capsense chip and the cpu as well. Either tonight or tomorrow I will be applying 12 volts to the daughter board and poking around with my multimeter to check what voltage is actually being supplied to the keyboard pcb, though we are suspecting 5.

I was thinking that one could also try to trigger the 8-channel controller chip 8273565 using a different based firmware (Hasu's TMK?). What is your idea after the reverse engineering ?

Also, does anyone knows where did Soarer find the information on the 5119699 and the 8273565
It is a pity that he disappeared ... I just hope that nothing happened to him.

idollar wrote: ↑I was thinking that one could also try to trigger the 8-channel controller chip 8273565 using a different based firmware (Hasu's TMK?). What is your idea after the reverse engineering ?

Also, does anyone knows where did Soarer find the information on the 5119699 and the 8273565
It is a pity that he disappeared ... I just hope that nothing happened to him.

I am not sure what direction I am going to head after getting the circuit narrowed down.

As far as firmware, I have no clue as I have zero idea on how to code or set it up.

idollar wrote: ↑...
In all cases, it should be possible to replace the original PCBs and use the Model-F-USB-Rev2 controller from xwhatsit.

I think it's not possible to use xwhatsit's controller, because the original controller is on the main keyboard capsense PCB instead of a separate PCB in this keyboard, so the ribbon cable where you would solder in xwhatsits controller doesn't exist.

It might be possible to use wcass's XTant PCB though as a replacement for the original PCB, and the you could use xwhatit's controller again.

Halvar wrote: ↑

idollar wrote: ↑...
In all cases, it should be possible to replace the original PCBs and use the Model-F-USB-Rev2 controller from xwhatsit.

I think it's not possible to use xwhatsit's controller, because the original controller is on the main keyboard capsense PCB instead of a separate PCB in this keyboard, so the ribbon cable where you would solder in xwhatsits controller doesn't exist.

It might be possible to use wcass's XTant PCB though as a replacement for the original PCB, and the you could use xwhatit's controller again.

I guess that you are partially correct.

The picture of the F matrix and controller can be found in this post from wcass on the Bringing the IBM PC XT into the 21st Century thread.

I reproduce the pictures from wcass here for completeness:
I guess that one could solder the xwhatsit controler to the original pcb using wires. This will avoid the custom made PCD What do you think ?

When reading (again) the XTans thread, I could not find how did wcass finally did his nice PCB (again, the picture is stollen from this post The alternative as you said, would create one new PCB from scratch.

Answers also here -> http://deskthority.net/post200033.html#p200033

Khers wrote: ↑I asked sort of the same question a couple of pages back when I got my bigfoot (the standard one, the four channel). The answer is that the controller (or lack of one) is not on a separate PCB on those, which means that it's not very easy to use xwhatsit's controller. You can do it, but it requires sawing off the lack-of-controller-part from the PCB or cutting the traces. Soarer's controller is a better fit in this case, and has been used by me and others to resurrect bigfeet. Recently, Laser has managed to make one work using Arduino.

Edit: Just saw that Halvar had given much the same answer, but better expressed, in the thread that you refer to, i$.

and here -> http://deskthority.net/post200055.html#p200055

idollar wrote: ↑I think that it is now confirmed.

• First option is to use Soarer's converter if you have a 4 channels chip (4-channel controller chip 5119699)
  Second option is to write some code to use the 8 channel chip (8-channel controller chip 8273565)
  Third is to use Xwhatsits controller with the current board what may means to saw it.
  Fourh is to create your own PCB and use Xwhatsits controller

I guess that I will have to wait for my board to check if I am lucky with it and I can apply the option 1