Some Alps goodness (Dell AT101, AEKII)

[davkol]

I've recently acquired several "new" keyboards and there are more to come. Although I won't have time to investigate properly (and take some pictures) until May, I'm quite curious...

The first keyboard is a Dell AT101 #GYI3PVAT101 with an old logo and salmon Alps. For me, the surprising part is that

1. those switches click only sometimes (especially when released quickly) and only on the upstroke, not downstroke;
2. no keycap is yellowed except spacebar, and key lettering looks blurred... could it be dye-subbed PBT?

The other one: Apple Extended Keyboard II #BCGM3501 w/ German layout, assembled in Ireland. It appears (unless I'm confused by the lightbulb in my room) to have white cream Alps, which happen to be much more tactile, clicky and consistent than switches on the dell. In fact, they're the best Alps-like mechanical switches I've ever used.

Finally, a bonus. I have found two numpads populated with PCB-mount white low-profile Alps. Only one has a TRRS cable, the other one nothing. I wonder what I'll do with them.

Rambling over.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Yes, the AT101 was tactile, so the switches are not intended to click. The Alps-made AT101 series had dye-sub keycaps; once manufacturing was taken over by Silitek, the keycaps were laser-etched. The keycaps are reported to be ABS: [wiki]Dell AT101[/wiki], but it may be that all the keycaps are PBT except space bar, due to the difficulties of moulding large objects in PBT. Topre do this: the Realforce has PBT keycaps except space bar, which is ABS. PBT space bars tend to warp like a banana. ABS is the plastic that is prone to yellowing.

[wiki]Alps SKCM White Damped[/wiki] was a cheaper version of cream damped that we figure was made only in 1995. Officially the AEK II was discontinued in 1994, but it appears that they were still made in 1995 with white damped switches. They're not supposed to click though — sounds like in their cheapness, or simply through wear, they're emitting sounds that they're not supposed to.

[davkol]

Both do make a sound, although not as sharp or high-pitched like the click of complicated white Alps, nor scratchy like black Alps or Cherry MX Brown. The AEKII consistently all over the board and on both downstroke and upstroke; the AT101 inconsistently only sometimes on upstroke. The AEKII appears to be made in 1995.

The DS PBT everywhere but on spacebar sounds about right, looking at them again.

Looks like there's something missing in the wiki...

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Google has already found this topic! I don't see any other mention anywhere of PBT keycaps on the AT101— you may be the first English-speaking person to ever notice. ("DS" is doubleshot, though confusingly it can also stand for "dye-sub".)

You should invite Ripster to take one of your keycaps and put it through his acid testing ;-)

[Daniel Beardsmore]

PS You should post a photo of your keyboard to the wiki as a demonstration — there don't seem to be many people with yellowed AT101 keyboards, while I did find AEK (or AEK II, one or the other) exactly as you describe.

[davkol]

As I wrote earlier, pictures are coming in May. But at least a potato thing for now and for the search engines...

[scottc]

Those keycaps legends (tab, enter, backspace particularly) look to be a lot more interesting than on my later AT102W with black ALPS. Or is that just me?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Later AT101 + AT101W (plus 102/103 counterparts) were made by Silitek, and have laser-etched legends.

I've replaced every possible keycap on my AT102W with Tai-Hao doubleshots, but there's a few I can't swap: caps lock (AT101 caps lock is stepped and the mount is something like 1 or 2 mm out); ctrl, alt, and space (all changed due to additional front row keys); return (donor keyboard is bigass enter); and backspace (donor keyboard is 1 u backspace). I did swap \ even though I had to use a beige key (donor keyboard has two \ keys, strangely).

Laser etching is just horrible. You can see the difference here:

Laser etching vs double-shot (detail).jpg (386.79 KiB) Viewed 4053 times

And yes, Silitek's legends are boring.

[scottc]

Oh, interesting. I had assumed that they all had the same awful lasered keycaps. I should get some more caps for my AT102W, the current ones are absolutely dreadful.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

OK, a few notes:

The wiki doesn't say what printing method Silitek used. Sandy noted to me that it's neither dye-sub nor laser — he thought silkscreen.

As I understand it, Silitek moved to laser-etching with the AT10_W (you can see that very clearly in my photo above). Before that, it's not clear what they used and I can't find an adequate photograph to examine the surface detail.

You can see a comparison here:

http://sandy55.fc2web.com/keyboard/dell_43197.html
http://sandy55.fc2web.com/keyboard/dell_29858.html

There's nothing special about the legend designs: the AT102/AT102W had simpler legends than AT101/AT101W. I guess for ISO, the textual captions were omitted to reduce localisation costs. That may explain why Apple also used symbolic legends in Europe and textual legends in the US.