deskthority

Let me know if you ever plan on selling some of the original terminal keycaps

There's a pretty long list of manufacturers who used the Alps big-foot as their keyboard, including a number which were only sold in Japan with the JIS layout. Building up a list of the different branding in the wiki is useful though

Have done the stabilizer mod in the past, and it works. Dismantling and reassembling the keyboard takes some time though.

I use a HHKB in work and more regular layouts at home, and I don't have any issues. YMMV.

Have some of these on the way for a TEX Yoda II build I will be doing, interested to see what they're like.

The layout is very similar to an LK101 (the VT1xx keyboard). The most obvious difference is that this keyboard has an additional row of function keys up top, the LK101 did not have these. What sort of connector does it have? The LK101 used a phono jack plug. Due to the popularity of the VT100, its l...

Much like scottc, I used to be swimming in AT102Ws (and AT102s) but I got rid of them, not particularly great keyboards.

Nice pics. Strange that a terminal produced by a French company for a French customer would have a US QWERTY layout and not AZERTY!

Acquired one of these a few months ago, took some pictures, but didn't get the chance to share before now. This keyboard was acquired from a parts supplier in a 'new in packaging' condition, so it wasn't in the original DEC box, but was unused in plastic and cardboard wrapping, and included the docu...

My first computer at home was a Siemens Pro M5, which looked a lot like the one in the pics, but it was a tower version.

Can't remember what the keyboard was like (this was about 20 years ago), I'm pretty sure it didn't have win keys though.

Interesting to note that the label reads "Made for IBM Japan" - it looks like this was probably a Japanese-specific IBM LPFK, and thus made locally, like most of the IBM Japan stuff.

mr_a500 wrote: ↑Wow, I too have been waiting years for somebody to find one of these. They're unbelievably rare. Companies that used them must have had them destroyed - rather than reselling them - when systems become obsolete.

Hey, daedalus! Didn't you used to be ch_123? (Or am I going senile?)

Yep, that's me!

Extraordinarily nice find. I think this is the first example of a buckling spring keyboard with a locking Caps Lock which I've seen too.

HOLY FUCK SOMEONE HAS FOUND ONE OF THESE Sorry, I've been waiting a long, long time to see a teardown of one of these... REVENGE, I salute you sir. Note the use of two 30 pin edge connectors instead of the single one that's typically found on other beamspring boards. My knowledge of some of the fine...

As far as I can tell, the 3277s were the first design of beam spring keyboard. As bizarre as it sounds, that PCB is beautiful!

OK so purely keyboard related? Will we ever see a Beamspring Series1 here? I'm not sure if we're talking about the same thing, but the terminal keyboard for the IBM Series/1 minicomputer is probably my 'endgame' keyboard: http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/physical-object/2010/12/1...

The Wyse keyboards have the same connector, but the voltage levels are different versus the DEC keyboards - the DEC terminal supplies 12V to the keyboard, which is converted to 5V in the keyboard. The Wyse keyboards expect 5V, so if you plug one into a DEC, then you'll fry it. The best thing for a D...

Nice review. Model Ms with a 'Made in Netherlands' stickers are refurbished units, IBM did not have a keyboard factory in the Netherlands.

Daniel Beardsmore wrote: ↑There are worse chiclet keyboards than that one?

The keyboard on the latest generation of Apple laptops makes those older desktop keyboards feel like a joy to type on in comparison.

Mr.Nobody wrote: ↑Logitech is located in Taiwan, I don't know whether they had any plants in Ireland back then.

Alps had a plant in Ireland, so that would be my bet

Honeywell was (one of?) the OEM for the LK401. I too have never seen a rebranded one, but I'm also not surprised to discover that they exist.

The vertical and horizontal ones are not interchangeable - that was very much a lesson learned the hard way

The intention was to create dedicated pages per keyboard, unfortunately I did not get the time to create ones. Glad to see some ones are being created.

My first guess was Icelandic, but there's too many special characters. I'm going to +1 to the idea that it's for some kind of word processing/typesetting software package. The fact that they were installed on a '1401 implies that they were ordered as a standalone kit from IBM (or perhaps someone el...

My first guess was Icelandic, but there's too many special characters. I'm going to +1 to the idea that it's for some kind of word processing/typesetting software package. The fact that they were installed on a '1401 implies that they were ordered as a standalone kit from IBM (or perhaps someone els...

Would also be interested, fwiw

y11971alex wrote: ↑Were beamsprings ever patented in the EEC? If not, they could have manufactured it as well.

Yes, if you check the wiki, the patent we have is one filed in England.

Only discovered the existence of these today, glad to see that one went to Hataa :D Like the eBay seller's listing suggests, it seems like it was intended for use with Unix systems, having a layout somewhere in between the LK101... https://silvrback.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/482528e1-b82d-4f4b-a9d1-7...

A with Hat = Insert
A with squiggly line = Delete

One simply does not Ctrl-Alt-Delete a mainframe

That Bigfoot in the OP is pretty interesting - it's not the standard 5291 layout (which is basically the same as that 5251 beam board) but has the same layout as the IBM System/23 Datamaster. I've seen external keyboards with that same layout before, I'm not entirely sure what they were used for.