Name Those Rings

Muirium · 02 Mar 2015, 20:53

These rubbery rings came along with a miscellany of caps I got lately.

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Anyone know what they are? About the same size as small coins, and several millimetres thick. I have more than this, perhaps a whole keyboard's worth, if that's indeed where they go!

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Could they have something to do with IBM Selectrics / beamsprings? Because there were indeed some of those caps in the box. And the slots are similar in the rings to those in beamspring caps.

Among others.

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And a bunch of Clare Pendar switches and caps I already posted.

Mysterious!

Nuum · 02 Mar 2015, 21:09

Maybe key blockers for beamspring switches? I.e. they go onto the stem so that you can't depress the switch?

chzel · 02 Mar 2015, 21:17

Or maybe dampers? Something like o-rings for Cherry MX?

Muirium · 02 Mar 2015, 21:22

Plausible. Trouble is I don't have the keyboard they came from, they're just spare parts.

If they're IBM, then whatever keyboard it was, it wore those blue and grey caps. Who's stripped down a Selectric, I wonder? (PMing Cindy…)

elecplus · 02 Mar 2015, 21:36

They ring a bell, something ancient in the attic. I will go look in a little while. Are they flexible, easily bent, or pretty firm?

Of all the 40+ beam springs that have come through here, I have not seen these on any of those.

Redmaus · 02 Mar 2015, 21:37

Beam Spring O rings!

Not that you would want to silence such a click/clack...

elecplus · 02 Mar 2015, 21:40

The RM1 reminds me of an old calculator that had several memories. You could figure multiple equations or columns of numbers, and store the results from each in a different memory location.

Muirium · 02 Mar 2015, 21:42

Thanks Cindy. They are likely old indeed, probably early 80s. Flexible, quite supple. They do strike me as chunky, vintage o-rings! But it's just a guess.

HaaTa · 06 Mar 2015, 08:13

You know what's scary, I think I recognize nearly all of those keycaps...

seebart · 06 Mar 2015, 09:14

HaaTa wrote:You know what's scary, I think I recognize nearly all of those keycaps...

That's not scary, that's impressive!

Muirium · 06 Mar 2015, 12:06

Nearly? Do elaborate!

HaaTa · 06 Mar 2015, 18:38

DSC_0525 by triplehaata, on Flickr

Not quite, but pretty close (https://plus.google.com/photos/11384566 ... 5823397356)

Closer?

Untitled by triplehaata, on Flickr

The RM1, R and 0,3,4 keys are almost certainly from calculators.

Almost, but not quite (https://plus.google.com/photos/11384566 ... 5823397356)

Pretty good methinks

DSC_1099 by triplehaata, on Flickr

The only one I'm pretty sure I haven't seen is the Print/Send Line keycaps. But it looks like there's some sort of insert...

seebart · 06 Mar 2015, 18:41

Muirium wrote:Nearly? Do elaborate!

There you go Mu! ;p

Muirium · 06 Mar 2015, 19:50

Ah, well those unseen caps are the ones I actually have an ID for! They're the internal lightbulb Clare switch caps I had in the other thread:

I've three of them, I think. The white one is in the foreground here. Translucent, ready for the wee bulb that slides in as it's pressed down around it, which would make it brighter when pushed:

I like all three of these caps. The others are unrelated, but they have a central window right in the stem for their own indicators. Again smarter than what we have around today.

Anyway, I need to shoot a bunch more pictures (I promised Facet I would) and do a real stock take. Ah winter's everdark, you're almost over now…