Hi-Tek vs Stackpole

Daniel Beardsmore · 15 Dec 2013, 03:52

I've just noticed something else. Notice how the separator bar on Hi-Tek keyboards is completely flat on top, and level with with support triangles:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/triplehaat ... 5403683621

Compare with this CASI keyboard, with a stepped bar that's raised up above the support triangles:

https://plus.google.com/photos/11384566 ... 5823397356

That stepped design is specifically detailed in Stackpole's patent. There's a suggestion that this might be a better indicator of origin; for example, this HP 2382A terminal keyboard has the "waffle frame", but the sliders are flat bar:

http://deskthority.net/photos-videos-f8 ... t5471.html

At the moment, there are too few photos to go on. For example, the Oric Atmos keyboard is confirmed Stackpole, but no photos appear to exist of the sliders. There are a lot of photos of these types of switches and keyboards, but seldom photos of the switches AND the PCB/switch grid branding.

HaaTa · 15 Dec 2013, 08:02

More pictures of the CASI keyboard.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/triplehaat ... 686728893/

Soarer · 15 Dec 2013, 14:27

Any good? Use freely.

: stackpole_front.jpg (196.89 KiB) Viewed 9123 times

: stackpole_back.jpg (206.42 KiB) Viewed 9123 times

: stackpole_switch.jpg (210.69 KiB) Viewed 9123 times

: stackpole_switch2.jpg (163.85 KiB) Viewed 9123 times

Then what? I guess these don't come apart easily after that...

Daniel Beardsmore · 15 Dec 2013, 16:00

Thanks. Those are far better than the photos on eBay of that same keyboard (which does have a blurry slider photo, but I just forgot :) Interesting that the slider is different again. Also, the keyboard is very flat. Compare with the HP 2383A terminal keyboard, which has tall mouldings:

http://deskthority.net/photos-videos-f8 ... ml#p138417

Daniel Beardsmore · 15 Dec 2013, 23:46

Current theory, up for refutation:

: Hi-Tek vs Stackpole.png (40.41 KiB) Viewed 9091 times

Hi-Tek: one long finger on the left, four small fingers on the right; separator bar wide and parallel

Stackpole: one long finger and two small fingers on either side; stepped separator bar or replacement of triangles with rectangles

This appears to fit the evidence to date: Toptronics, Perkins-Elmer, HP 9816 (all confirmed Hi-Tek), and Oric Atmos (confirmed Stackpole, which happens to partially match the Stackpole patent). The CASI keyboard has no supporting signs of being Hi-Tek (white-infill serial number, branding), so that seems to be Stackpole, and it does exactly fit the design in the Stackpole patent (the Atmos does not).

OK, anyone got any exceptions to this where Hi-Tek or Stackpole branding is present on a keyboard that does not match the above?

The waffle frame appears to be a red herring: it appears that Hi-Tek used that themselves.

Diagram based on an excellent top-down photo from Kurk on the wiki.

theGagne · 18 Dec 2013, 16:46

: WP_20131218_001.jpg (242.54 KiB) Viewed 9048 times

Here's my DEC VT52. Ignore the filth underneath, I need to clean it.

The clamp is solid on the left, 4 prong on the right. The cross beam is a straight bar with a raised portion in the middle.

Not sure if this is noteworthy or not, but on some of the raised bars there are little imprints, 1 dot or 3 dots, while some hav none. Not sure if this is caused by the clamp or there by design.

Also the caps have adapters for a cross mount.

Daniel Beardsmore · 24 Jan 2014, 01:44

Interesting, never seen those dots before!

dorkvader · 24 Jan 2014, 02:06

I guess the black ones have the raised portion in the middle, whereas white sliders don't.

Here's a KB I have with both:

I was unable to determine any real difference between the two.

Daniel Beardsmore · 24 Jan 2014, 02:26

Wow, phosphor bronze return springs? That's unusual.

I love how the sliders always split open :P

The raised bar, and raised area on it, looks like it would increase the pretravel. To what end, I do not know.

See the photo just above my post:

http://deskthority.net/photos-videos-f8 ... ml#p138418

I assume your PCB isn't branded (or branded DEC or HP or what not, or even Cherry USA), but do you have any white infilled numbering (or what's left of it) anywhere? I've yet to see that on a Stackpole keyboard, but it appears on at least one Hi-Tek keyboard, so I'm intending to see if this is another pattern, or a red herring.

dorkvader · 24 Jan 2014, 03:02

Daniel Beardsmore wrote:Wow, phosphor bronze return springs? That's unusual.

I love how the sliders always split open

The raised bar, and raised area on it, looks like it would increase the pretravel. To what end, I do not know.

See the photo just above my post:

http://deskthority.net/photos-videos-f8 ... ml#p138418

I assume your PCB isn't branded (or branded DEC or HP or what not, or even Cherry USA), but do you have any white infilled numbering (or what's left of it) anywhere? I've yet to see that on a Stackpole keyboard, but it appears on at least one Hi-Tek keyboard, so I'm intending to see if this is another pattern, or a red herring.

Sadly, the PCB was Made in USA by TI. the IC's date it to 1981.

full album: http://www.flickr.com/photos/110970257@ ... 094078524/
Any good ideas on cleaning these switches so I can take wiki-suitable photographs? I spent a few hours on it already; getting dust out of those switch holes is a significant pain.

collector of junk · 24 Jan 2014, 12:34

one on ebay

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/360844363083? ... 1438.l2649

bit too much for me /postage to uk /but looks nice may bid if no one else does !!!!!

Daniel Beardsmore · 24 Jan 2014, 21:53

dorkvader: Ah, you do have the white infilled numbers, as I suspected you might.

Interesting-looking circular objects in the spacer sections in the top row — I can't quite tell what I am looking at there. They look like ferrite cores, but that would make no sense.

Daniel Beardsmore · 19 Mar 2014, 00:35

I've updated the following pages what what I know so far:

[wiki]Stackpole switch grid[/wiki]
[wiki]Hi-Tek linear[/wiki]
[wiki]Hi-Tek lock[/wiki]

Daniel Beardsmore · 23 Jun 2014, 01:53

Curses. I've just realised that the CASI keyboard has white numbering stamped onto the grid.

Either Stackpole used the same numbering practice (I think Hi-Tek also did it the rubber stamp way) or Hi-Tek used one of the slider styles associated with Stackpole.

Daniel Beardsmore · 03 Sep 2017, 01:26

It gets more curious. Following the discovery of an HP 2623A keyboard with yellow sliders that seem to be Hi-Tek, I put this to D'Milo Hallerberg. Neither he nor Susan Kennedy (also ex-Hi-Tek) are aware of Hi-Tek using any slider colour except white (colourless).

So that suggests that my diagram is misleading or incorrect. The shapes circled in blue give Stackpole for the HP 2623A keyboard, but the colour would indicate Stackpole. The contacts (circled in red) would therefore also not be manufacturer-specific.

Then you have the centre-raised black type that theGagne and dorkvader have, which are Hi-Tek-shaped but still the wrong colour!

So far, every keyboard that we know for certain to be Hi-Tek does have white (colourless) sliders. All these strange, mystery ones are always totally unbranded.

Stackpole also used white (above) but also yellow and green (all confirmed).

Daniel Beardsmore · 03 Sep 2017, 16:01

OK, so the switch contacts are not an indicator!

Stackpole in US patent 4255635 wrote: One strip is solid, but the upper end of the other one preferably is provided with parallel longitudinal slits to form fingers that assure good contact with the other strip.

The contact design is therefore not an indicator!

What I did notice is confirmed Hi-Tek sliders seem to have reinforced corners. D'Milo independently observed the "boss" (as he calls it) where the webbing meets the plunger shaft, something that's been a consideration already. In that HP keyboard, despite having Hi-Tek–style contacts, the separator bar still has Stackpole's stepped design. These three characteristics are all highlighted in the image below:

: Badly-drawn hyphen added afterwards as the typeface I chose doesn't have a hyphen glyph!!; Characteristics.png (16.44 KiB) Viewed 7938 times

Colour is unlikely to be a guide; the black keyboards are probably Hi-Tek — they fit the new Hi-Tek criteria. However, anything in a bright colour is highly unlikely to be Hi-Tek.

Another potential difference is the size of the diagonal bracing, which seems to be larger in Stackpole keyboards.

I need to go back through every confirmed and unconfirmed keyboard and see how they match up.

Daniel Beardsmore · 05 Sep 2017, 01:52

I rediscovered this earlier:

keyboards-f2/hi-tek-corp-history-t10435-30.html#p229162

At the time it seemed irrelevant, but now I see that it's a confirmation that Hi-Tek did make switches with black sliders, and that the island design is indeed genuine Hi-Tek:

: Hi-Tek old island.png (8.25 KiB) Viewed 7909 times

However, I still don't know what the island is for, and and why it always has erratic blobs on its surface. In the example linked above, the blobs look very blobby, and one switch looks as though there's water between the contacts.

OldIsNew · 08 Sep 2017, 14:07

Very interesting analysis! I don't know if this will help any, but there are a few markings on the the switches from the HP 2623A - here is one pic I have of them on the yellow switches:

: 20170824_230046.jpg (107.74 KiB) Viewed 7879 times

Daniel Beardsmore · 08 Sep 2017, 19:35

I believe in a simple principle: take lots of detailed photographs of each keyboard (including switches, labels, ICs, PCB markings etc), upload all the photos to the wiki, create a wiki page for the keyboard (making sure that it's properly categorised), and add the wiki page to any other relevant pages (chiefly, the pages for each switch used).

This way, when someone comes up with a new theory, they can go through all the wiki entries and see how many of them fit the theory, and whether any of them contradict the theory.

I don't recognise any of the symbols or codes, but I do sometimes refer back to previously collected examples to see if they match up, and I definitely rediscover information contained in photos that at the time of posting meant nothing to me.

When all the information is collected in a single place, this becomes so much easier. Hi-Tek and Stackpole photos, just as with most brands, are scattered about all over the place, instead of all being stored and categorised on the wiki.

Note that, in many cases, Hi-Tek supplied only the switch grid, so all markings on the PCB relate to the customer (e.g. HP, DEC, Dragon Data).

Daniel Beardsmore · 03 Dec 2017, 01:53

OK, so the diagonal corners are not a guide, since they're almost entirely absent in this keyboard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G5ZG-eEdUE

Sadly that's only a video — for some reason nobody ever wants to properly document Atari 600(XL), 800(XL) and TI99/4A keyboards. Lots of pictures, seldom any that show both the top (with the switches) and bottom (PCB with branding).

So that leaves us with (for the high-profile series):

a) the T-shaped boss (still present here)
b) the thinner, inset separator bar

Curiously this one is Dovetail:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0G8BwtEXSKQ

This one from 1983 is not:

photos-f62/hi-tek-keyboard-t12653.html

The Dovetail one is claimed to be from 1980, but it seems to be stamped 8219, meaning that there was some crossover!

Daniel Beardsmore · 11 Dec 2017, 00:38

OK, new page with a new illustration and (over three and a half years on, albeit only three years since this topic was created) a recreation of my original diagram with far more detail:

[wiki]Hi-Tek and Stackpole recognition[/wiki]

The rebuilt diagram is based on photos from snuci, Soarer, Kurk and others.

The text has come out in serif as the wiki no longer has any idea what sans-serif is,and it also butchers the character weight and kerning sometimes.

002 · 11 Dec 2017, 05:03

Nice work, man. Your diagrams are always very clean and easy to understand.

snuci · 11 Dec 2017, 14:10

I agree. Great work. You really captured the waffle pattern quite well.

Engicoder · 11 Dec 2017, 15:22

Great work. The diagrams are excellent as always.

Daniel Beardsmore · 11 Dec 2017, 22:42

I'm still curious about that anomalous keyboard (yellow slider in the diagram) — the earlier (filed 1979) patent doesn't seem to have the rotationally symmetric contacts, which are a feature of the patent filed in 1980.

Dating evidence for Stackpole keyboards is virtually non-existent. The CASI keyboard though has IC dates from 1980–84.

The puzzle is that the anomalous keyboard is dated to 1982, well after the second patent was filed, and no other instances of that design have ever been seen. I'm guessing it's not a later design, as the low-profile type seems to be the later design.

snuci · 11 Dec 2017, 23:13

Daniel Beardsmore wrote: ↑Dating evidence for Stackpole keyboards is virtually non-existent.

... for this type of Stackpole keyboard. There are earlier Stackpole examples that have dates of different kinds and I find Stackpole to be earlier than Hi-Tek.

Daniel Beardsmore · 11 Dec 2017, 23:38

To be fair, those are also very rare! I didn't realise how old they were — sometimes things like patent years just don't register with me.