Stereographics ESGI DB9/MiniDin3 SGI Cable pinout (Unverified) - Printable Version

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+--- Thread: Stereographics ESGI DB9/MiniDin3 SGI Cable pinout (Unverified) (/thread-2655.html)

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Stereographics ESGI DB9/MiniDin3 SGI Cable pinout (Unverified) - weblacky - 01-10-2021

Hi All,
I know this has been somewhat documented here and overall, I don’t disagree with what been posted, however it’s my belief that a pinout is missing.

https://wiki.preterhuman.net/Stereographics_on_SGI_systems

I saw an auction from an ESGI stereographics emitter on eBay and the seller showed the DB9 cable end:
   
As you can see it has 4 pins!  Well, that’s interesting, ok now take a look at the cable part number information from Stereographics
     


The cable the seller showed also narrowed into a MiniDin3, just like the above document.  So…how can it have 4 pins?

Well either one does nothing, or two are connected together.  Here’s what I did.  I used a multimeter set on Ohms and probed the DB9 MALE connector on the ESGI emitter box itself. Only DB9 pins 1,6,7,8 had any values between them, Pins 6 & 7 had less then 1 Ohm between them.  I also got this SAME < 1 Ohm value when I measured these pins on the DB9 Stereo Connector on an SGI Octane V12!

These pins are marked on the Octane manual as “Digital return ground” and “Digital return Ground for Stereoview” on Page 311.

It’s my current belief that to make the cable (shown as Cable 0920056-120 on the cable diagram), that BOTH pins 6 & 7, both grounds, are actually tied together (hopefully they have the same potential).

So I think to make a DB9F -> MiniDin3M/F -> DB9F cable you connect:

DB9 #1 -> MINIDIN3 #3
DB9 #6 & #7 -> MiniDON3 #2
DB9 #8 -> MiniDin3 #1

DB9 Drain-Wire -> MiniDin3 Metal Shields.

Then do the reverse to get back to DB9 if you’re making a DUAL-system capable cable.  You can only wire 3 contacts and I believe these are them.

I cannot verify right now, but I considered the research to be worth posting.  I’m likely going to see if I can get some NOS CrystalEyes CE2/CE3 glasses for longterm storage eventually, just to have for collection purposes.  But this cable (or two cables, depending on how you think about) are supposed to work on all SGIs that use either DB9 or MiniDin3 stereoview connectors.

I ordered the MiniDin3 connectors from DigiKey (CP-2130-ND & 2057-MDP-003-ND) and the straight serial from Amazon (was MUCH cheaper than Digikey).  I check with a cable tester to ensure the DB9 cable was a straight cable (It was) before I started.

So I think it’s correct, I may not know until far in the future.

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RE: Stereographics ESGI DB9/MiniDin3 SGI Cable pinout (Unverified) - robespierre - 07-07-2025

Hi,
The internal hardware documentation "hdh2.pdf" includes specs for the stereo glasses port in section 4.6.9 "Stereo Sync Signal".
The doc erroneously claims that there were two genders of DE-9 used, but that's not true: only DE-9 female is used on Impact/Octane/Onyx2.

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