Weird Alps board

[just_add_coffee]

Thrift store find by the missus. We were very excited to find a keyboard with ALPS emblazoned on it.


I'm not finding a ton of info about it online, but apparently it's called the Glidepoint Wave and was made in the mid-90s. It's a fairly heavy and solid board. I use two monitors and frequently have to use the mouse to move from one active program to another, so the built-in touchpad mouse would seem rather nice.

But then ...


That doesn't look like any Alps switch I've ever seen. In fact, it looks very rubber dome-y. However, it feels stiffer than a Microsoft Ergonomic 4000 or any other rubber dome I can recall encountering. I don't have a PS/2 adapter, so I have no idea if it actually works.

Does anyone know more about this keyboard?

[dokyun]

It's an SK-6000, made by Silitek . Besides Alps, you can find them with a few other company's logos on them. They're a good cheap source of Alps caps, sans the stepped alpha keys.

[just_add_coffee]

It's an SK-6000, made by Silitek . Besides Alps, you can find them with a few other company's logos on them. They're a good cheap source of Alps caps, sans the stepped alpha keys.

Silitek! Ah. Thank you for the help. It was strange to find a rubber dome keyboard with the name of a (former) mechanical switch maker on it.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

How curious. This means that Alps were still speaking to Silitek at this point. This supports the viewpoint that Silitek were legitimately involved when manufacturing of the Dell AT101 transferred to Silitek. Whether it's true that Silitek took over the tooling for SKCL/SKCM is another matter.

[davkol]

I have (well, had, I gave it to my dad) a LiteOn SK-6000 (LiteOn and Silitek somehow merged IIRC?). Basically the same thing minus the touchpad (that's presumably made by Alps?); very common with Dell branding too.

It's my favorite semi-split keyboard similar to MS Natural. Partly because of the layout, partly because of nice relatively soft domes (definitely much nicer than in both early KeyTronic-made MS Natural or late Multimedia/4000 generations). I believe the key mechanism in mine is Maxi Switch rubber dome; it has Alps mount only on some larger keycaps (such as the stepped ones), while the rest lacks discrete sliders/mount.

[Z0RK]

I never seen a ergonomic maniacal keyboard with a track pad. Also adding onto it I have never seen a ps/2 track pad.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I've never seen a maniacal keyboard, but I do recall an instance when a maniacal mouse caused the computer to detect non-existent keypresses. Others here have, however, had maniacal keyboards too.

[thebluefox]

Is this dome over slider or pure rubberdome? Could you convert a keyboard like this to mechanical, using Alps switches?

[davkol]

It'd be slider over dome, not the other way around. From the OP's photo, there's keycap mount on the slider, thus it's separate from the keycap. As I mentioned in my comment, later revisions of the keyboard didn't have that (i.e., sliders were parts of keycaps on most of the board).

Of course it's possible to "convert it to mechanical"; the question is at what cost. VoteForDavid used MS Natural Ergo 4000 case as basis for a custom with MX switches. But that's not how it's typically done.

[thebluefox]

"It'd be slider over dome" , My mistake, maybe too much coffee
I mean, the housing, the touch and the hand support are already the way I want them. I saw a keyboard like this
for approx. 5 $ plus transport.

[Findecanor]

I think it would be easier to build this one into a mechanical keyboard than using a Microsoft 4000, because this one has straight angles and regular-sized keycaps where as the other one does not.
It would still be like building a new keyboard from scratch, only inside the existing keyboard's frame.

The method would be to either cut up a PCB-mounted keyboard (i.e. a Cherry G80-3000) or cut up a mounting plate for mounting inside the keyboard.
The function key rows are non-standard though, so you would have chose between adapting the case (plastic cement and then paint etc.) or adapting the donor keyboard parts.
How exactly to go about depends on how the Alps keyboard is constructed: for instance whether the barrel plate is integrated into the top shell and whether there are usable supports in the bottom shell and if a PCB or plate could be suspended... etc.