So, finally had some time to play with my MTS II tablet, keyboard etc. which was obviously part of the same large lot someone was selling on Ebay there for awhile, which I believe a number of us picked up. Since it had no cabling or anything I'd basically just left it for months - but now it's up and running. For those with the same beast in the same situation - I present What I've Learned So Far. Complete with part numbers:
MTS II is a touchscreen tablet made by NCS Technologies, and is their 'NCS Magnus II' tablet, having replaced the first gen NCS Magnus c.2006-2008. The tablet itself is a modified commercial version with military connectors and stripped of all its commercial interface ports except for a standard USB connection and a PCMCIA card slot hidden beneath the right-side anti-drop plastic bumper/ reinforcement. The tablet has an on-screen keyboard at boot which allows use of the stylus to operate the virtual keyboard in the absence of the physical keyboard. The separate LCD screen on the bottom displays various icons including hard-drive seek, and has three buttons: the leftmost single button cycles between the two adjustable parameters (speaker audio and backlight), where the rightmost buttons on top of each other are increase value/ decrease value. The values being adjusted are shown on the LCD screen as a number value between 1 and 100. The '911' button brings up the virtual keyboard under some circumstances and generates an 'all stations' SOS message under others. 'SCREEN' buttons allow brightness increase without having to use the ones near the LCD display, and turn on/off the screen display (toggle) for emergencies.
The system has an Intel Core Duo U2500 CPU running at 1.20 GHz, and comes with 1 Gig of RAM. It comes pre-loaded with Windows XP Professional SP2 and a Fujitsu MHY2080BH 80G hard drive. There are no commercial-pattern ports available except for the one USB port and the PCMCIA slot, and there is no wireless functionality. Software supporting the Movement Tracking System functionality is Miletus Associates Inc. 'TracerLink Pro V2.0.12' which serves the mapping and plotting functions, and there are pre-loaded maps of Iraq and Afghanistan, plus key areas and training regions etc. in CENTCOM, CONUS, USAREUR, Korea etc. Maps are zoomable from basic region right down to individual streets in some cases - less resolution available in others. Vehicle plots are via icons with or without descriptive elements according to set preferences.'MTS Messenger' allows brief text messages to be sent to other system users and support elements, and addressing is typically done by 'bumper number' (BM) of users in different groups according to AO. The status display is customizable and has the same 'gumball' type status icons showing either red or green for message status, FOM (quality of GPS data), state of GPS crypto fill and some other things including MT-2011/ 2012 transceiver status. 'Vehicle Server' is the third. Via the MT-2011/2012 linkup, you can select the appropriate database in your AO so vehicles in the region will plot on the TracerLink maps (and be available for text messaging via MTS Messenger.)
The MTS+ operator's manual is also stored on the tablet, though it centers around operation of the programs above vs. anything more useful with respect to installation/ wiring of the tablet itself, and the cables listed in the manual have no NSNs. Some of the COMTECH part numbers appear valid - others don't.The tablet itself runs on 12VDC. One of the functions of the COMTECH 'black box' left in many of our FMTVs is to convert 24V down to the 12V that either generation of Magnus tablet use. Connecting to the common Comtech 'black boxes' left in some of our FMTVs is done via (oddly) the large 'ANTENNA' port on the bottom of the tablet. A 'Y' cable connects to that ANTENNA receptacle, with the Y splitting into POWER and RS-422 leads, which in turn hook up to the 'Computer Power J8' and 'Computer RS/422 J7' connections on the Comtech black box using a set of cables that basically extends each leg of the 'Y'.
MTS 'Y' Cable: 506D465-01
Extension Cables:
POWER: MTS-V2-03 POWER CABLE, LAPTOP, P/N 1751-0008 (MFR COMTECH DATACOM)
DATA: MTS-V2-02 DATA CABLE, LAPTOP, P/N 1751-0007 (MFR COMTECH DATACOM)
The remaining receptacle on the black box, "Antenna/ Modem J6", goes up to the MT-2011/2012 satcom transceiver on the roof (tan plastic box.)There is another cable used for the PLGR/ DAGR GPS feed into the system, which goes between the 'RS-232' receptacle on the tablet directly to the DAGR/ PLGR. I've never seen such a cable out there. It would have the D15-pin 'VGA' type plug either of those two GPS units uses, and would terminate in a small 3-pin Amphenol male. The only clue as to the part number is the one in the COMTECH literature, which would be 1751-0009.
When you boot yours up, you'll be faced with the 'PRESS CTRL + ALT + DELETE' security boot message. After doing that, you'll get the DOD warning message, then after hitting OK will get the standard Windows XP login. Unfortunately you can't use the second CTRL/ALT/DELETE method in the hopes of gaining the password-less Administrator account, and the Administrator account on MTS II has been renamed "xAdministrator". Other users are 'CSSAMO', 'mts' and 'backupadmin' - but I found all that out after the fact because I couldn't get in without changing some BIOS boot settings and doing a little USB magic I learned thanks to civvy-world users losing their passwords.
Hope that helps anyone who bought one of the systems recently on Ebay or wherever. This has been a lot of guesswork and buying likely-looking cables from various places...and scrounging others out of junked FMTVs.
