The Time Displacement Equipment (TDE) apparently gave its operator/s some degree of control over where (as well as when) a time traveller would materialise.
The official novelisation of the second film indicates that all four time travellers in the first two films were sent through the same TDE on the same day in 2029 -- with Skynet's two assassins being sent through first, and the Resistance's two protectors being sent through hours later -- yet all four arrived in what appear to be different locations.
Lightning burst up from the generator and streaked across the room above the heads of the techs. Winn ducked, smelling the strong odor of ozone. A huge charge of energy was building up. Everyone fell back behind the makeshift barriers and hastily put on their safety goggles. This was going to be big. And Kyle Reese was right in the middle of it.
The chamber below had become a hell of energy with the young soldier at its center. The drone and crackle of the generator built to a pounding thunder. John's heart was racing as fast as the rings. There was a ripping scream, as if a god were being disemboweled. The room filled with hot-white light. Without the goggles, they would have been blinded.
When the glare faded, the floating rings were empty. They slowed to a stop, seared and smoking. In that endless instant of time displacement, Kyle Reese had vanished. Oddly, in its place was a sphere filled with whirling debris: crushed beer cans, faded yellow newspapers, dated 1984, and a slice of a dumpster, filled with garbage from that year.
[...]
John turned from the smoking chamber, seeming years older as his features drained, sagging. He put a hand on Fuentes shoulder for support.
Fuentes realized this was the first time he had seen his commander lose strength. He'd seen him tired, lonely, and haunted before, but not like this. He shouted an order in Spanish to the sapper team behind him. "Set your charges. Let's blow this place back to hell."
John struggled to recover, shaking his head. "Not yet. There's one more thing we have to do." He turned to Winn. "What's your reading?"
Winn glanced down at a palm-sized power meter dangling off his belt. Looked up at John with a puzzled expression. "Just like you said."
John took a deep breath, feeling the wheels of destiny grinding near. Then, mustering his courage, he abruptly strode out of the room. Winn started to follow. Fuentes frowned in confusion and hurried after, grabbing the tech's arm. "What reading? What are you talking about?"
Winn indicated the meter. "This is the energy signal put out by the time displacement. I recorded two other identical pulses as we were fighting our way in here."
"Two?"
Winn impatiently continued walking. Fuentes stayed with him. "What are you talking about?"
"The first one must have been the Terminator going through to 1984."
Fuentes was still confused. "Yeah?"
Winn careened into the corridor and quickened his pace to catch up to his commander. Fuentes dogged the tech. "What was the second?"
"Another terminator, probably."
[...]
The last fragment of uncertainty in John's mind was blasted away. It was time to make the last move in the chess game he had been unwillingly playing with Skynet for fifteen long years. He knew a lot of what would happen, but past a certain point in his memory, he wasn't sure of the outcome. A knife embedded in a weathered picnic table with the words NO FATE carved in them was the dividing line between what he knew had happened and what might happen. His very existence could be erased. Or maybe everything would still turn out the same. Or ... what? For the first time since he was a boy, John no longer had the answers. With growing apprehension, he handed the rifle to Winn, took the probe, and abruptly walked across the room to a heavy steel door covered with a thin sheet of melting ice. John punched out the code and waited....
Ice shattered like glass as the door broke its seal and opened inward. He started to enter when Fuentes stepped in his way, rifle at the ready, and moved inside ahead of him, scanning the room for potential attack. His breath formed in front of him. They were in a coldstorage room. Fuentes gasped as his beam fell on a row of naked bodies, hanging on steel racks suspended from the ceiling.
John panned his light around. There were hundreds of men and women, in rows of ten. Within each row, the bodies were absolutely identical.
"Terminators," Fuentes whispered, his hand on his rifle butt, uneasy.
John quickly walked along the synthetic bodies to the end of a row and hesitated. He scanned the faces. No, not here. Then he gazed down the other row. All the same. Strange to him. Then ... he turned to another row and stopped. It was filled with identical, familiar faces. The broad, brutally handsome features sent a shock of recognition through John.
It was he.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day novelisation by Randall Frakes
As Kyle was being sent through the TDE, there was a mention of the Resistance's techs typing in coordinates on their portable terminals.
Astonished, Kyle looked down. He was walking on air, buoyed by an unseen field of force in the middle of the rings. Winn turned to the techs and ordered them to begin the time-displacement sequence. Several of them typed in coordinates on their portable terminals.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day novelisation by Randall Frakes
It's also mentioned in the novelisation of the first film that the Resistance's techs "brought [Kyle] in high," in order to reduce the chances of him accidently materialising knee-deep in pavement. This is apparently the reason he materialised in mid-air, rather than on the ground like the T-800.
He rubbed his arm unconsciously—a bloody scrape where he came down. The techs had brought him in high. With so little time to familiarize themselves with the displacement-field equipment and its calibration, they must have erred on the side of safety. Better than materializing knee-deep in pavement. Right.
The Terminator novelisation by Randall Frakes
Terminator Genisys appears to take place in a different timeline than that of the first film, but in it we get to see a version of the scene where Kyle is sent through the TDE to 1984, and the dialogue suggests that the TDE had settings for both the time and location of a time traveller's arrival.
LT. WHITLEY: We'll need fifteen minutes to ready the machine, sir. We're running coordinates; we should have them for you momentarily.
JOHN CONNOR: Los Angeles, 1984.
LT. WHITLEY: Los Angeles, May 12... 1984.
Terminator Genisys (2015)
