In a perfect world, I could buy a bunch of the keyboard/mouse adapter cables and just use regular devices. It is not easy to come by though, so I contemplated making a small dongle to allow pairing of bluetooth devices.

I searched quite a bit and have been unable to find this connector from any of the manufacturers, so perhaps it was truly a custom designed connector style. I was also unable to find it used in any other products, I tried to look at other old products by Ricoh that may have used it including the Thinkpad 220, but no luck.

As an alternative it would have been nice to do the straight PCB method that can be done with USB, however the contacts are recessed on the PC110 so contact would not be made to a flat PCB. What I contemplated was to use a spring contact on a PCB, along with an MCU. This is my proof of concept, mechanically it fits and holds nicely, and the contacts line up and make some contact so I will proceed to investigating what MCU to use and produce a PCB. As a fallback I will put a footprint for a standard ps/2 DIN connector so I could at least use a standard mouse. Not pretty but it will work.

I have done some work with Bluetooth/BLE a while back on another project, but this is new to me. What I need is a chip I can use to pair a bluetooth keyboard/mouse to, and then drive the ps/2 signals. Driving the ps/2 is the easy part, pairing to a mouse/keyboard is uncharted territory for me.

Proof of concept PCB dongle:

AVX 8 Position 1mm pitch Spring Compression Contact

The Original Cable

PC110PS/2DESC
1Not Connected
21Data
32Reserved
44+5V
56Reserved
65Clock
73Ground
83Ground

This is version 1 of the prototype. I will add some section to support the metal components, because they are flexible and slightly bent they are not close to the outside, so it makes it hard to put the screws in when closed. I will add a section that forces the metal to be straight and ready to accept a screw.

This SLA of course is not dyed and no surface finishing work has been done.

Update: Here are the files for this attempt:

These are the brass press inserts I used:

https://www.mcmaster.com/94510A360/

The 16MB Memory module for the PC110 is not easy to come by these days. The PCB is fairly simple and the memory chips should be salvagable from other more standard memory modules of the era so I contemplated doing a small production run of them so I could have a couple and I would have some to share, or others could produce their own.

So far I have been unable to find a source for the connector aside from removing them from 4MB modules.

4MB Module

Some Incorrect Connectors:

Some quick reference material for sourcing/salvaging chips for this effort:

This is the initial design for the prototype bezel to hold the ZJ050NA-08C

There are some challenges with 3D printing due to how thin some areas are. I expect to receive an SLA print of this on this coming monday, and from there I will look at additional revisions and print another one until it is just right.

With some surface finishing I hope we can get it close to looking factory, but certainly it will be functional from a mechanical perspective.

I continue to work on various aspects of the PC110, but updating information online in of itself is a task!

Bios Patcher
I continue to work towards understanding the method xpatch.exe uses for updating the flash memory, with the goal of creating a “vpatch” which will make the required modifications to the CT65535 bios for use with the TFT display. I will not get too adventurous until my ZIF sockets arrived so I can easily repair the flash program in the event an early version of vpatch “bricks” the unit.

I am using a combination of Turbo Debugger and Ida to understand and follow the actions. I was unable to find documentation for the VLSI VL82C420FC5, however I did find one for the VL82C480, and it appears that many of the configuration registers must have been shared between them.

TFT Display

I have put the AT050TN22 V.1 on the shelf for now, it seems to be very sensitive and not electrically compatible with the PC110 without some further electronics, perhaps some kind of impedance matching, this is something I do not know enough about right now to deal with properly.

The ZJ050NA-08C however works almost perfectly without any special conditioning of the signal lines. I had a slight issue with blue, it may have been a solder bridge or an error in my PCB, I will address this in the next revision of the board. There are some mechanical changes now needed as the ribbon cable location is changed, and the analog power and backlight requirements are different.

This was the concept V2 PCB but it will be totally different for the new display. Of course I had mixed up the footprint of the 30pin connector which is why it does not go in the correct direction.

Bezel
I spent some time in Fusion 360 drawing the bezel, however I just do not have the time to do this properly so I am going to go back to my original plan and find somebody local to draw it for me.

I got quotes for injection molding tooling, and it would be around $3000. If 3D printing cannot produce a good enough result, this may be the only way to get a professional result. I would need to sell additional pieces over time to recover that cost. Maybe $50 dollars each or something.

Keyboard/Mouse Dongle
I managed to find the propritary keyboard/mouse dongle online so I will be able to look closer at the possibility of 3d printing a custom 1mm pitch housing and using other JST or other style pins to fit into it.

I have done this previously, but this another run with the AT050TN22v1 and its matching VGA driver connected to the external VGA of the PC110 docking connector. Display is slightly cut off because the screen is just in there temporarily. This just to remind myself and demonstrate again that the screen is in fact okay and has good contrast and can properly display all the colours.

I had attempted previously to try and identify the values for each pin manually with a logic analyzer and colour bands same as Mr.Taka has attempted previously, but as we both suspect this leaves room for error. Additionally the assignments can change based on XR values for colour width and other settings so this makes documenting even harder when it is not certain which mode is active sometimes.

I tried another approach which maybe was already tried. I attempted to work backwards from the OEM display Citizen pin-out comparing the recommended connections with C&T for similar screens and take those as the assumed pins and then move forward to the TFT15 values.

On PCB V1 only line line for sure was bad. I noticed that usually RED was showing as Yellow, and Red+Green=Yellow, so I realized that one of the RED pins on PC110 has to be connecting to Green pin on VGA. Identified it as PC110#21 to VGA#25 (G2). I cut the trace on the PCB and I now had no cross mixing of colours, but they were still very wrong, likely because if misorder MSB to LSB as well as missing lines.

My approach purely from documentation and not practical testing leads me to believe that PC110#21 is RED2, which is consistent with the issue I was having.

#PSTNShaSanPC110TFT15TFT18PCBV1PCBV2
57P0UR1DU7UD78B0B014(B5)16(B3)
58P1UG1DU6UD69B1B113(B6)15(B4)
60P2UB1DU5UD510B2B215(B4)14(B5)
61P3UR2DU4UD411B3B316(B3)13(B6)
63P4LR1DL7LD717B4B412(B7)12(B7)
64P5LG1DL6LD618G0B524(G3)24(G3)
65P6LB1DL5LD519G1G021(G6)23(G4)
66P7LR2DL4LD420G2G123(G4)22(G5)
67P8UG2UD3UD312G3G222(G5)21(G6)
68P9UB2UD2UD213G4G320(G7)20(G7)
69P10UR3UD1UD114R0G431(R4)32(R3)
70P11UG3UD0UD015R1G529(R6)31(R4)
71P12LG2LD3LD321R2R025(G2)30(R5)
72P13LB2LD2LD222R3R132(R3)29(R6)
73P14LR3LD1LD123R4R228(R7)28(R7)
74P15LG3LD0LD024 R330(R5) 
75P16   N/C R4  
76P17   N/C R5