There is a distance encoder at the back of the outer focus tube.
There is a corresponding contact wiper on the inner focus tube.
Again, appears to be four bit binary.
Hi Pete, do you know what is the distance encoder here used for? I thought it's present only in (D) lenses, while this one is not. I am thinking of replacing chip in my old Tamron 90/2.8 (with 5 pins), and I thought the chip would be simply soldered to the pinout just like in Minolta 50mm primes (1.7 and 1.4), but it appears to be similar to this 50mm macro