HMMWV Blue Force Tracker Setup

[Wile E. Coyote]

Bwahaha [mad scientist laugh] -- it's ALIVE!

Thanks to Jake20's pathfinding - reprogramming the BIOS brought everything back to life. There were a few false starts with the Erase routine but one of the YouTubers got it figured out after running into the same problem (primarily because the documentation for the USB programming device is...nonexistent) and after that things were as easy as it gets.

I also remember now that my BIOS got disabled originally back in 2015 because I guessed at the BIOS password 3 times incorrectly vs. the 'Security Enrolment' selection that killed Jake20's. Won't be making that mistake again. I searched through the BIOS code hoping the password would be hard-coded in plain language but...no such luck. There's a bunch of different schemes DRS could use for the BIOS password - none of which are easily divined.

Without knowing the BIOS password there's no way to get it to attempt to boot off of anything other than a hard-drive inside one of the legit caddies. I *think* the system looks for the presence of the caddy before it allows any SATA ops but haven't put it to the test yet. Picking up the voltages needed from inside the PU...wouldn't be fun...as even if you piggyback wires onto the appropriate drive caddy pins to feed a SATA power connector of your own it means disassembling the entire chassis to get at it. No thanks. Did it once - memorable for all the wrong reasons.

Caddies show up on ePay but...hard to justify dropping $400 on something clearly snatched out of the burn pile. I'll have to come up with some Plan B or ask around for some people who supported them in the field/ TOC if they know what the BIOS password is.

(Edit: ohyeah - also all the DC voltages in the thing do NOT ground/ chassis reference. )

 

[jake20]

Bwahaha [mad scientist laugh] -- it's ALIVE!

Thanks to Jake20's pathfinding - reprogramming the BIOS brought everything back to life. There were a few false starts with the Erase routine but one of the YouTubers got it figured out after running into the same problem (primarily because the documentation for the USB programming device is...nonexistent) and after that things were as easy as it gets.

I also remember now that my BIOS got disabled originally back in 2015 because I guessed at the BIOS password 3 times incorrectly vs. the 'Security Enrolment' selection that killed Jake20's. Won't be making that mistake again. I searched through the BIOS code hoping the password would be hard-coded in plain language but...no such luck. There's a bunch of different schemes DRS could use for the BIOS password - none of which are easily divined.

Without knowing the BIOS password there's no way to get it to attempt to boot off of anything other than a hard-drive inside one of the legit caddies. I *think* the system looks for the presence of the caddy before it allows any SATA ops but haven't put it to the test yet. Picking up the voltages needed from inside the PU...wouldn't be fun...as even if you piggyback wires onto the appropriate drive caddy pins to feed a SATA power connector of your own it means disassembling the entire chassis to get at it. No thanks. Did it once - memorable for all the wrong reasons.

Caddies show up on ePay but...hard to justify dropping $400 on something clearly snatched out of the burn pile. I'll have to come up with some Plan B or ask around for some people who supported them in the field/ TOC if they know what the BIOS password is.

(Edit: ohyeah - also all the DC voltages in the thing do NOT ground/ chassis reference. )

That is phenomenal, I’m glad I was able to make you spend $10 on a programmer to fix a large paperweight

Funny enough, once I figured out I could rescue these indefinitely, I started clicking around a lot. I also looked in the bios code for any hard coded passwords but with no luck. It seems like typing the bios password 3 times only locks it out temporarily, it comes back after a reboot. It’s only after security enrollment that mine would go dark forever

I’m not quite sure about the caddy situation, I think it’s only sata power, sata data, and the top /bottom drive temp sensors that go through the connector. My only real observation with these was that they’ll only boot off the internal backplane sata port. Though I was able to get a caddy luckily. My entire workbench is sprawled with these now, need to re-assemble them and their 200 screws lol.

If you’re gonna throw windows 10 on there, it works great after you’ve disabled all the background services and all updates have completed. It’s still no rocket but plenty fine for having documents, maps, etc.

Best way to install it is to grab an ssd, partition the first 8GB of it as a separate volume, write the windows install boot files to that partition, boot it off the primary sata port, then install to the secondary large partition. If you try any other methods, MBR will install to the wrong drive and it won’t boot. I could refine this a bit further but it’s a computer from 2005 inside a humvee so I’m not sweating it.

Good news is the windows maps app works with a basic jungle website USB GPS after you sacrifice one of the keyboard cables to make a USB hub

 

[badgerd]

I’m late to the party but also working BFT and MRT tablet OS and usability.

I found a pinout of the fat BFT drive tray and made an adapter to hook up a SATA SSD instead of buying a tray. Stripped down Windows 10 works ok, Ubuntu works better but AntiX Linux is best so far. Still no touch screen support and it might be too old to get anything to work.

I’ve had good success at using one of my MTS tablets to install “ghost” windows that completes setup on the BFT. Still need to add a few drivers and windows hates the USB but it works.

I’ve got usb direct from J5 on the computer instead of hacking the keyboard, but I’ll probably modify a keyboard eventually.

I do have a “sanitized” original hard drive running Redhat 2 but it’s a highly modified build to make it functionally worthless without passwords. I’m working on that to see if there’s a way to identify the touchscreen driver and bake it into a AntiX build (or maybe Android, I’ve got that running on a tablet that I’m working on to be much more than just a cool accessory).

Much more to follow, just glad to see more than just me working on these!

 

[jake20]

I’m late to the party but also working BFT and MRT tablet OS and usability.

I found a pinout of the fat BFT drive tray and made an adapter to hook up a SATA SSD instead of buying a tray. Stripped down Windows 10 works ok, Ubuntu works better but AntiX Linux is best so far. Still no touch screen support and it might be too old to get anything to work.

I’ve had good success at using one of my MTS tablets to install “ghost” windows that completes setup on the BFT. Still need to add a few drivers and windows hates the USB but it works.

I’ve got usb direct from J5 on the computer instead of hacking the keyboard, but I’ll probably modify a keyboard eventually.

I do have a “sanitized” original hard drive running Redhat 2 but it’s a highly modified build to make it functionally worthless without passwords. I’m working on that to see if there’s a way to identify the touchscreen driver and bake it into a AntiX build (or maybe Android, I’ve got that running on a tablet that I’m working on to be much more than just a cool accessory).

Much more to follow, just glad to see more than just me working on these!

That’s awesome, you may want to give this a try:

Home

www.touch-base.com

Maybe it’ll work for you, may just have to run the xp 32 bit version.

You shouldn’t really need anything except serial drivers to even see if the display is working based on what I read. You should see hex output on a serial port at 2400 baud when you start poking a screen with the stylus. I haven’t been able to see this, but my display touch may just be completely broken.

Let me know if that works for you or not

 

[badgerd]

I’ll try that this week. I’ve got several displays so odds are at least one works!


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[jake20]

I’ll try that this week. I’ve got several displays so odds are at least one works!


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Yep I’m curious, let me know, I’ve got a few other random drivers I’ve scrounged that you can try as well, but the root indicator of it working should be whether the serial port displays hex output when poking it.

I tried both using putty in windows across all the com ports, and connecting to all the serial lines using screen in Linux.

 

[badgerd]

I haven’t got to Putty yet, but caught the touch screen driver being loaded on an original drive (and it works when Redhat running X-Windows fully boots).

The driver referenced is likely the same one as the MRT tablets, the TSHARC driver from Microchip. I can’t seem to make it work(I tried it already before finding this post), but it might be worth a try in a Linux environment. I tried to force it to be “serial” and only ports 3 and 7 actually accepted the driver and changed names in device manager. Still doesn’t work, but we might be missing a UART bridge (CPX210x is common but doesn’t work with this either) since it seems to be “emulated” serial over USB.

I’ve tried the 7.08 and various 6.20 drivers as USB and serial with no success. Link below if you want to give them a try!

https://www.microchip.com/en-us/software-library/tsharcdrivers

I’ll report the Putty output when I’ve got a chance to do it, but let me know if you have any luck!


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[mgFray]

Looks a lot like this is running a userspace driver, that is feeding input back into the kernel through a virtual input device.

So it's the tsharcd that you need, as there may not be an actual Linux kernel driver.

I found this, it might be helpful: http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/LinuxDriverUserManual_3.0.4.pdf

Edit: Just found this.. https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/touch-and-gesture/tsharc-controllers

There appear to be (old) Linux driver downloads, but it might be enough to get started.

 

[TOBASH]

Mods, perhaps it is time for a specialized “computers and technology” forum. This stuff is fascinating, but it seems not to fit next to topics about injection pumps and 4L80E transmissions.

 

[Wile E. Coyote]

Mods, perhaps it is time for a specialized “computers and technology” forum. This stuff is fascinating, but it seems not to fit next to topics about injection pumps and 4L80E transmissions.

Well...we have the Military Communications forum with a few similar topics already so I suppose it could all be moved there. Or we could just leave it as an anomaly secure in the knowledge people can skip *on* to the posts about injector pumps and 4L80E transmissions and why every hub seal seems to leak?

 

[badgerd]

Well...we have the Military Communications forum with a few similar topics already so I suppose it could all be moved there. Or we could just leave it as an anomaly secure in the knowledge people can skip *on* to the posts about injector pumps and 4L80E transmissions and why every hub seal seems to leak?

Well said.

The issue with the “other forums” is that they don’t get the traffic this one does. Keeping related (and this is HMMWV related) posts together allows for more people to see. Maybe they can help or maybe whats happening here helps someone else. But either way, like many others, I’ll just scroll past the posts that don’t interest me.


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[TOBASH]

Well said.

The issue with the “other forums” is that they don’t get the traffic this one does. Keeping related (and this is HMMWV related) posts together allows for more people to see. Maybe they can help or maybe whats happening here helps someone else. But either way, like many others, I’ll just scroll past the posts that don’t interest me.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The problem with leaving this topic here is it will get buried and forgotten whereas a dedicated computer forum will allow it to stand out.

IMHO

 

[Wile E. Coyote]

I’m late to the party but also working BFT and MRT tablet OS and usability.

I found a pinout of the fat BFT drive tray and made an adapter to hook up a SATA SSD instead of buying a tray. Stripped down Windows 10 works ok, Ubuntu works better but AntiX Linux is best so far. Still no touch screen support and it might be too old to get anything to work.

Do you have a wiring diagram of how you hooked that up to run the SATA SSD? I'm just not paying what that Ebay vendor wants for a caddy. Not happening. If I have to remove the 132,456 little black screws again...I guess I will. Under protest. And probably cursing gods in languages I don't speak.

 

[jake20]

Do you have a wiring diagram of how you hooked that up to run the SATA SSD? I'm just not paying what that Ebay vendor wants for a caddy. Not happening. If I have to remove the 132,456 little black screws again...I guess I will. Under protest. And probably cursing gods in languages I don't speak.

Get a Molex to SATA power adapter off the jungle website, then just get a longer SATA cable, then go direct to the SSD with it from the board.

You’ll need to cut the molex side of the connector off and find out where you can connect the +5 and +12v onto the board, but the SATA will be direct and the SSD can just sit in the tray, maybe just ziptie it so it doesn’t flop around.

Should only have to remove the top cover. Make sure you use the SATA port that goes to the backplane and not the eSATA connector on the front. You can only boot off the internal one.

I’m saying this from memory, haven’t touched these in a few months and out of town at the moment. I really need to resume what I had in progress on these.

 

[jake20]

I’ve attached some images I found from when I was doing testing. I have a caddy and was thus able to use a sata power splitter to go from 1x to 2x so that I could use 2x SSDs. If you find where the 12v and 5v connections are on the backplane, I suppose you could solder direct to the back and just have a sata power dongle sitting in the bay.

 

[Wile E. Coyote]

I’ve attached some images I found from when I was doing testing. I have a caddy and was thus able to use a sata power splitter to go from 1x to 2x so that I could use 2x SSDs. If you find where the 12v and 5v connections are on the backplane, I suppose you could solder direct to the back and just have a sata power dongle sitting in the bay.

Yes, the earlier question was hoping you'd already figured out where to pick up 12V+ because it looked like a pain in the ass -- the rest of it I mostly had worked out.

Turns out you can grab 5V+, GND and 3.3V+ right from the unpopulated 4-pin connector mount on the sub-board that contains the connector for the slim HDD caddy. The 12V+...yeah...that's another story...I remembered searching for that before. The pinouts in the manual for all of the connectors in the various drive bays don't list 12V+ anywhere. On the backplane there are some unused connectors (one marked POWER) but rather than search for 12V+ there and maybe wind up pulling power from the other side of some component or inadvertently dragging down some 'SENSE' line - I went to the J5 connector which supplies 12V+ to external devices (Pin G on the connector looking from outside the PU - Pin 7 as labelled on the board.) So now I have my power plug and my SATA data connector just sitting in the drive bay - and after a test hookup to some random hard-drive I had - it all works.

I sure got good at completely stripping down those chassis now. Though I may never want to see a mini-torx screw ever again. I'm going to be winding those things in my sleep.

Still deciding on what OS to put on it. Leaning towards buttnaked Win 10 just for utility's sake but we'll see.

 

[jimmr]

Impressive!!, I'd never expected to even hear of bft after leaving iraq. Can't believe that gear could be had but then that was 14 years ago and that along with the navy stuff i programmed to thwart ied was close held info.

 

[Mogman]

Impressive!!, I'd never expected to even hear of bft after leaving iraq. Can't believe that gear could be had but then that was 14 years ago and that along with the navy stuff i programmed to thwart ied was close held info.

Welcome to the SS forums!

 

[Wile E. Coyote]

Impressive!!, I'd never expected to even hear of bft after leaving iraq. Can't believe that gear could be had but then that was 14 years ago and that along with the navy stuff i programmed to thwart ied was close held info.

The dumb thing is that with the hard-drives removed on the AN/UYK-128 family stuff, all you have left is a commercial-tier industrial computer. Nothing special about it. COTS flavored USB, drive interfaces, VGA display, keyboard - the works. It's like a 20 yr old Dell Optiplex wearing flashy Amphenol connectors like a hooker in heels.

First one I ever saw up for sale on Ebay was probably 15 yrs ago - old RVS-330 model. Apparently the repair facility was in Florida and the Ebay vendor - also from Florida - got it via some USPS 'unclaimed freight' sale because using units were told to ship back for repair via USPS and I guess not all of them made the trip. Anyhow, long story short - sale stays up until the auction closes with a successful bidder. Seller cancels the sale after the fact because he gets informed by the Black Suburban Brigade he's not allowed to sell it. Even though it was legally obtained and had no drives or anything else in it.

Fast-forward to 2022-2023 and there's a couple every week on Ebay now - the JV5 model - last model in that older pre-tablet form-factor. Suddenly it's not a big deal anymore. Same with all the DAGR/PLGR units up every week. I guess with the passage of time the powers-that-be just have more important things to do now than worry about 25 yr old hardware and a handful of nerdy collectors...which makes a lot of sense.

 

[jimmr]

haha, I wouldn't try to typify the "black suburban" gang !! I'd guess by the time they get the orders to 'watch' something it's already too late but I have learned that they can act fast if needed.
we had a rig with a bft and maybe the ''defeater'' on board that got stolen by the bad guys in a moment of confusion. Obviously it was easy for the chopper to go get them but i'm sure they thought that last joy ride was going to really set them up!