TI-99 keyboards

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I was curious to see if there were any photos proving the switch type in the TI-99 keyboard on eBay.

I found this:

http://kbdbabel.sourceforge.net/matrix/index.html

I've just contacted the guy at KBDBabel, as he's got a Futaba-Sejin branded keyboard that should prove once and for all that the old Futaba switches are Futaba (count the legs: two per switch, while the "clicky" ones are three-legged — wait, we could call them Futaba Triskelion switches).

Also, if I've not confused this guy by asking for pictures of his Futaba-Sejin TI-99 keyboard (long day, with longer days to come), we might get proof of what switches go with the Alps code:

http://www.mainbyte.com/ti99/keyboard/keyboard.html

The TI-99 might be a little gold mine.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Well, no reply from KBDBabel and only a glimmer of hope with the other site. I just found this one, which seems to depict Futaba complicated linear switches in the Futaba-Sejin keyboard:

http://forum.tlienhard.com/TS1000/www.t ... tslego.htm

I tried to write to the guy, only to have my message rejected. It turns out that the site you see above is an archive of a site closed down in 2007.

One more dead end on a very long list of dead ends.

[TacticalCoder]

I've got a Ti-99/4a (and I take it I'm not the only DTer to own a Ti-99/4a) here but I'm not really into Futaba switches.

Can I help? (say by taking pictures or something)

By the way it is "kinda" working: it has graphical display issues (characters being a bit weird) and these are problematic to fix, so I don't bother. I just hope to find a second one on a flea market one of these days and maybe make a working one out of the two or something

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Keyboards I know of so far (unless I've forgotten one):

• General Instrument — confirmed to use Alps switches, nothing further needed for this one
• Alps — looking to confirm 100% the switches alongside the PCB ID (for full visual confirmation of what the PCB ID indicates are Alps SKCC, as we don't know that every vintage tee switch is SKCC, only the ones in the TI-99/4A)
• Futaba-Sejin — looking to confirm the switches alongside the PCB branding (should be white complicated linear and white+black complicated linear lock based on the photos on the page mentioned above), since there's no actual proof anywhere that what we call Futaba switches, actually are
• Hi-Tek — visual details and confirmation of Hi-Tek name
• Stackpole — visual details and confirmation of Stackpole name (it might be moulded into some of the keycaps, from what I read), and how this one differs from the Hi-Tek one, since it's one of the computers known to use both Hi-Tek and Stackpole keyboards (either the Atari 800 or 800XL is the other)

Most people seem to have the General Instrument keyboard with Alps switches; the Futaba-Sejin one seems to be really rare.

I just wanted photos showing the details above, as all but the first present valuable data.

Ultimately, photos of every vintage computer keyboard would be good, as what people never think about, is that there are details locked away in them that we don't even know about until we go back and look at photos already taken. For example, I saw MouseFan's vintage tee photos many times before I even learned how [wiki]Alps keyboard codes[/wiki] worked, and looking back, I'm now able to read things into them that I couldn't before.

A topic on another forum showing an Atari 800 or 800XL keyboard with the AWC logo and the AWC name allowed me to identify AWC as being related to Wong's and to attach a meaning to the logo, giving me an insight into a contemporary keyboard catalogue that distinguished "SMK" from "WONGS/SMK", which I now take to mean the SMK keyboard and the AWC keyboard with SMK switches. I thought the AWC logo (which I couldn't read as anything: the letters are stacked atop each other) on the BBC Micro Types 1 and 4 PCBs indicated the draughtsman, whereas instead it's the logo for AWC.

Having the wiki stocked up with photos of every vintage keyboard allows anyone here or elsewhere to have good reference material for research, even for things that the person taking the photo didn't see the relevance of at the time. Specifically useful data includes ICs with dates on, PCB branding and IDs, switch types (there was often more than one, e.g. latching or heavier weight). Having the photos in the forum is better than nothing, since eventually you'll stumble upon them somehow with Google, and at least they'll have a reliable home and an owner, since photos on Imgur are largely untraceable back to anyone, so further questions are impossible.


With that said, I no longer work on the wiki, so it's up to you.

[eversor1]

Hi all, noob here. I've long been interested in the keycaps that are used on the TI 99. Has anyone identified these? They almost look like the KT family to me, however I guess they could just be their own thing. Does anyone here know the family / material of the keycaps on this board?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

These are the only keycap families that I know of:

[wiki]Category:Keycap families[/wiki]

There is indeed a "KT" family, but those are relegendables.

Which KT are you thinking of? I assume there were several keycap manufacturers, since there were numerous keyboard types.

I read somewhere (can't find it now) that if you have a banker's 3 key, it's the Hi-Tek version. That matches with the Perkin-Elmer 3700, but those caps don't match Comptec's Hi-Tek keycaps:

http://deskthority.net/photos-f62/dec-v ... t7565.html

There's more photos here, but their forum is retarded and locks out access to the images:

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/231482 ... try3117081

[eversor1]

I did not know that all KT keys were relegendables. Interesting to know. The reason that I am interested is that a friend of mine expressed interest in a TI 99-like keyboard. I would love to be able to put him together a modern replication, at least something with similar keycaps.
So I guess these are certainly not similar to the KT family. My next guess looking at that family chart would then be SA possibly?
BTW that DEC vt100 looks great

[Daniel Beardsmore]

We don't know all the keycap makers and we don't have all the families listed. For example, I didn't realise Devlin listed all their families:

http://www.devlin.co.uk/products/compon ... ycaps.html

I don't even know that all the TI-99/4A keyboards had the same keycaps; we know that at least two OEMs were involved because the shape of the '3' differed. The Alps keyboards likely used Alps's own keycaps. Another oddity is a matching typeface between Key Tronic and BTC, as though they used the same keycap OEM, but nobody knows who that was. Comptec were a big keycap OEM in the day, and their keycap division became Signature Plastics.

The TI-99/4A keyboards just had the common keycap style of the day: textured spherical. Lots of people made them, and we may never know who they were. You can still buy comparable keycaps from Devlin and Signature Plastics, though whether you can still get the old-school textured finish I don't know — the modern SP sphericals I've seen are shiny (as was common in the 70s).

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Ah, Signature Plastics do a KT profile too. According to their website:

DSA Medium Profile, Spherical Touch Area, non-Sculptured Layout
SA High Profile, Spherical Touch Area, Sculptured Layout
DCS Medium Profile, Cylindrical Touch Area, Sculptured Layout
KT High Profile, Cylindrical Touch Area, non-Sculptured Layout
86 Medium Profile, Spherical Touch Area, non-Sculptured Layout
LP Low Profile, Cylindrical Touch Area, non-Sculptured Layout

Their other website omits 86, but includes (in the navigation) G20.

[Muirium]

Don't forget SS Family (like SP has!):

http://solutionsinplastic.com/pdfs/SSFamily.pdf

SS High profile, Spherical top, Sculptured. The difference with SA being the key tops all lean towards the back. More like Jacobulus thinks is right?

http://deskthority.net/workshop-f7/keyc ... t9847.html

[Firebolt1914]

Just saying, but trying to contact the kbdbabel guy is nearly impossible. He's apparently a really busy guy.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I need to branch out into a subject where people are more likely to prioritise it.

[mr_a500]

I have a Stackpole (or Hi-Tek?) version of this, but it's NOS, so I didn't want to disassemble it - but I'll check it out as soon as I get some time.

There are other differences in TI-99/4A keycaps. The General Keyboard version is more square and less curved than the Stackpole version. The material seems different too - with the General Keyboard version feeling more like thick PBT and with a finer textured surface. It's one of my favourite keycaps.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I've got SKCCAF switches on order, so I consider SKCC settled. I am confident that the TI-99/4A uses the short-stem switches, so SKCC indicates both. One more of my stupid provisional names dispensed with. The other one we may manage to crack, owing to its popularity, is Alps integrated dome, but that's the one name I really like and I don't feel as inclined to correct it :) (It's SKE-something; semi-integrated dome may be SKEY but I don't know for certain.)

It's that one stinking photo of the Sejin keyboard from kbdbabel that I wanted the most after that, just for the belt-and-braces proof, though the evidence for Futaba is pretty good: Electronic Surplus's MD-4PCS listing agrees with the contemporary catalogue transcription I found. That's unlike the "ICL switch" that turned out to be Ericsson, and "RAFI" switches that turned out to be Cortron/Devlin; I'm never satisfied until we have the evidence to back up our claims.

I've seen a lot of claims for Hi-Tek and Stackpole in early 80s keyboards but very rarely any photos backing up these claims (and often not even a photo of the switch contacts and slider, which makes it hard to strengthen or defeat my theories on recognition).

Matt3o is the keycaps guy you want.

[mr_a500]

[*]Stackpole — visual details and confirmation of Stackpole name (it might be moulded into some of the keycaps, from what I read), and how this one differs from the Hi-Tek one, since it's one of the computers known to use both Hi-Tek and Stackpole keyboards (either the Atari 800 or 800XL is the other)

I checked and mine is Stackpole. You can see the name on the PCB. The sliders are green.

[Dmiloh]

I can confirm that Hi-Tek made keyboards for the TI-99. At the time, this was the highest volume keyboard requirement in the world. Only the Dragon Data home computer came close in volume.

[Hak Foo]

This seems odd because although a fairly decent seller, the TI-99 and Dragon machines weren't the biggest sellers of the era by far.

I wonder if that means that the contracts for some of the more popular contemporary machines were split among several vendors. The Atari machines are known to have used several keyboard suppliers, but the Commodore VIC-20 and 64 and Apple II/II+/IIe seemed more or less consistent

[Dmiloh]

Yep, Hak Foo, you're right - the Commodore was a larger volume product and ultimately won the war with TI. I'm not sure if we made keyboards for Commodore - if we did, our volume with them was lower. We were building about 20,000 keyboards a month for TI and I know they were also using other suppliers concurrently to keep up with a rather short-lived demand before they folded the product. 1982 was a helluva year for keyboard demand. Our factory was absolutely maxed out building for TI and for Dragon Data. Then, within months of one another, they cancelled all their orders.