Cheetah Systems Gemini Stenograph Keyboard

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Compgeke

10 Oct 2014, 07:20

This one's a bit of an oddball, nothing like what you would normally find.

Picked this up for $5 at a thrift store a couple weeks ago and finally got around to playing with it. I need to lube it a bit but other than that it does work fine and even passes the test the software has for every key. The key press is fairly smooth on keys that work, far better than anything Cherry or Alps ever made imo. Looking at the design it looks like it would be very easy to convert to USB if I wanted to as I can just replace the existing controllers with teensies and make something usable on a modern system.

Anyways, here's the pics.

Has a nice carrying bag. No idea if this is a stock item or optional.
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Manuals and software also with it.
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Left Side
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Right Side
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Individual switches. These here are actually Omron Photointerrupter switches. I honestly feel these are a nice choice for a linear board as you can make a plain slider with a cap on top with nothing to interrupt the linearness.
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Small Key Module. There's a big one as well but easier to photograph the small one.
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Both sides hooked together but opened up. It uses a cable to connect the two sides together and a cable that goes to the computer\power brick (or tap off the power of a PS/2 port - what this one has).
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Left side controller. Pretty funkey if you ask me.
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Right side controller. Not very funkey but interesting that it says Version 1.04 while the left says 1.08.
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Icarium

12 Oct 2014, 21:44

Learning a steno keyboard would be pretty damn cool. I wonder if it would be at all usable for chatting and forum posts. :)

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Compgeke

12 Oct 2014, 22:05

Possibly - it's a chording board and there is a DOS program for translation with it however it looks to only support Wordstar and such.

I'm sure with some work it can be made to work with something more modern, I just haven't had a chance to experiment with it.

jacobolus

14 Oct 2014, 10:11

Are you going to take apart some of those switches so we can see what they have inside? :)

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Muirium
µ

14 Oct 2014, 11:22

Nothing much to see. LED on one side, and a sensor on the other, I expect.

Wonder if anyone did optical switches long enough back they used lightbulbs!

crimzongryphon

17 Oct 2014, 22:58

Is this one of those speed typing keyboards I saw a youtube video of a woman speed typing once and she was using one of these.

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Compgeke

18 Oct 2014, 03:44

With the right skills you could be able to hit some insane speeds as it uses a shorthand rather than full words.

Here's a layout of the standard steno layout:
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