New Datacomp Alps

[M4dn3ss]

So I just noticed on Massdrop that the latest drop for the KB Paradise V60 has the option of Datacomp Alps blue/brown/red switches. With no information about these on the Massdrop page, a quick Google search led me to this:
https://www.facebook.com/KBParadise/pos ... 0026622460

Apparently Datacomp has taken over Alps production from Fuhua and they've supposedly made a few changes. I couldn't find any information anywhere aside from this. I assume they're going for the Cherry MX colour scheme and making blue = clicky, brown = tactile, red = linear, or they're trying to capitalise on the blue and brown Alps "hype". Either that or they might be amazing switches that are "the return of the glorious blue Alps".

What do you think?

[rominronin]

What I think is perhaps less relevant than what I HOPE!



BIG IF TRUE


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[E3E]

Interesting. If they're complicated or even a step in that direction, then that's good.

[//gainsborough]

At the very least we know they aren't pine alps, haha. This is interesting, though!

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I actually have a photo of the injection moulding equipment — I was talking with George at DSI about it, but once he realised I wasn't going to buy shedloads of stuff from him, he went cold on me. Officially it's all secret … Edgar Matias has confirmed (maybe at Geekhack, I forget) that the reason that Forward ditched SKBL/SKBM is that the tooling wore out and they weren't prepared to get it rebuilt. Apparently (I forget who said this — Edgar?) Datacomp didn't get the plans to the machinery, and they mistakenly rebuilt it with a slightly different size slot, so the keycap mount is not compatible with other switches.

DSI won't talk to me as I'm not a Big Spender™. Datacomp won't talk to anyone, it seems (I've tried several times across several years to find out what's still made etc.) Someone took some lousy photos of the Datacomp brochure at some trade fair a year or three back that were too small to see the pictures and then vanished (Ducky Nordic I think it was) — he may have bigger images on disc but the ones posted here were tiny. Mechanical Keyboards told me about these switches way back in January 2013, and then never responded about it again.

So over four years on and we still don't have them in a keyboard yet!

It took Matias half that amount of time to get tooled up from scratch and get working switches out the door!

[Techno Trousers]

Man, that's a crazy timeline of secrecy and ineptitude, Daniel!

If the keycap slot size does turn out to be incompatible with all other Alps switches, that's going to be a real blow, regardless of how good the switch mechanism itself is.

[Chyros]

Man, that's a crazy timeline of secrecy and ineptitude, Daniel!

If the keycap slot size does turn out to be incompatible with all other Alps switches, that's going to be a real blow, regardless of how good the switch mechanism itself is.

Man, honestly, if the switches are legit, and they offer a board with them in, I couldn't give a toss about how compatible they are.

Definitely interested in this. Wonder what they do with this.

[Techno Trousers]

Man, honestly, if the switches are legit, and they offer a board with them in, I couldn't give a toss about how compatible they are.

You might sing a different tune if Matias ever manages to get their PBT Alps cap sets produced. But regardless, I'm looking forward to hearing reviews of these switches as well!

[Chyros]

Man, honestly, if the switches are legit, and they offer a board with them in, I couldn't give a toss about how compatible they are.

You might sing a different tune if Matias ever manages to get their PBT Alps cap sets produced. But regardless, I'm looking forward to hearing reviews of these switches as well!

Honestly I couldn't give a flying fuck about PBT Alps keycaps, even if I didn't already have a bunch, I'm MUCH more interested in proper modern Alps switches!

[XMIT]

Maybe we can get matt3o to consider Alps mount for next time.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Man, honestly, if the switches are legit, and they offer a board with them in, I couldn't give a toss about how compatible they are.

I imagine that quite a few people will want to use them with keycaps from other keyboards, so it would be useful if they've corrected the keycap mount dimensions. This is the original topic and, surprise surprise, all the photos from Ducky Nordic have vanished:

photos-videos-f64/datacomp-taipei-june-2014-t8244.html

I am assume that Datacomp have just recreated SKBL/SKBM, so they'll be like Matias switches but without all the improvements. Apparently loads of new Alps clones were springing up to deal with Cherry's manufacturing shortfalls, but these have never materialised and instead we have Cherry MX clones, no surprises there really as why would anyone deliberately make switches for a keycap mount that hardly anyone uses?

[Hak Foo]

It's interesting that probably a big part of it was that mechanical keyboards died as a consumer product from say ~1995 to ~2010.

There was a lot of ALPS infrastructure-- existing PCB designs and plates which could presumably be easily fired back up, but I suspect that it took so long that most of it is lost.

If you're going to start from scratch, ALPS offered no real advantage over MX from a business perspective.

[arkanoid]

The facebook page has 30+ pictures of the Datacomp switches. It looks to me that the switch internal has a different contact plate design compared with the SKBM.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Mechanical keyboards were still being made into the 2000s, but these were most likely to be Cherry MX, simplified Alps and Alps clones.

What's interesting about the Datacomp Alps is that the photos show the same mould numbering: large typeface, with a 5 on the left (always a 5 for some reason) and a single letter on the right. That is, it's a good thing they're using their own slider colours as we won't be able to tell them apart from the later de/re-branded Forward switches.

The implication is that the moulds for the shell were still in good working order, perhaps because they were already remade to remove the Alps branding and add (on the bottom only) the Forward branding.

As for the switch contacts, it's hard to tell from the photos, but they do still appear have the single "one-arm bandit" internal actuator. They seem to be the same general idea, but adapted.

[Chyros]

I take moral offence at the thought that simplified Alps will use first-gen Alps slider colours :p .

[depletedvespene]

Ok, so simplified colors, then?

[Tuntematon]

I take moral offence at the thought that simplified Alps will use first-gen Alps slider colours :p .

It's even more offensive to think that they are imitating the MX colour scheme while at the same time trying to exploit the cachet of the "Blue Alps" label . Hopefully they are giving us something new and interesting, i.e. something better than standard simplified Alps, but meaningfully different than Matias.

[webwit]

Alps! Back into the game!

[M4dn3ss]

I take moral offence at the thought that simplified Alps will use first-gen Alps slider colours :p .

It's even more offensive to think that they are imitating the MX colour scheme while at the same time trying to exploit the cachet of the "Blue Alps" label . Hopefully they are giving us something new and interesting, i.e. something better than standard simplified Alps, but meaningfully different than Matias.

Well, I have a bunch of "blue" Tai Hao Alps clones (aka APC) and they seem pretty good (haven't tried them in a board yet)

It would be fantastic if someone could just make clones of complicated Alps with transparent housings and MX stems. It's definitely possible but I guess if it were that simple somebody would have done it already. But maybe we can always hope they can make something almost as good. Don't know in what ways they could be "meaningfully different than Matias" though.

[Chyros]

I take moral offence at the thought that simplified Alps will use first-gen Alps slider colours :p .

It's even more offensive to think that they are imitating the MX colour scheme while at the same time trying to exploit the cachet of the "Blue Alps" label . Hopefully they are giving us something new and interesting, i.e. something better than standard simplified Alps, but meaningfully different than Matias.

Well, I have a bunch of "blue" Tai Hao Alps clones (aka APC) and they seem pretty good (haven't tried them in a board yet)

It would be fantastic if someone could just make clones of complicated Alps with transparent housings and MX stems. It's definitely possible but I guess if it were that simple somebody would have done it already. But maybe we can always hope they can make something almost as good. Don't know in what ways they could be "meaningfully different than Matias" though.

The transparent plastic isn't the same plastic as that on complicated Alps. This influences the sound, I think it's an important part of why Matiases don't sound as good as Alps.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

It would be fantastic if someone could just make clones of complicated Alps with transparent housings and MX stems. It's definitely possible but I guess if it were that simple somebody would have done it already. But maybe we can always hope they can make something almost as good.

What you have to ask is, why are complicated Alps complicated? They're rated at 20 million cycles, which is not all that high. Bearing that in mind, is there any reason to believe that the switchplate design has any benefit at all?

The objective here is not to replicate the work of Alps precisely, but to replicate the feel: blue Alps was very smooth and had precise tactility, without the secondary bump found in simplified Alps and clones thereof.

I feel that it it's not necessary to replicate complicated Alps, but experience with Matias switches shows that you need to devise a contact system that's suitable. I've mentioned before that [wiki]USw LABI01[/wiki] has a stronger click (even in a plastic plate!) and a far more precise feel by far than SKBM/Matias switches, but it's too heavy. It's like white Alps, in that it just needs the force level turning down a bit. However, being a rare and unidentified switch, we have no idea about its longevity or overall reliability. It's so much smoother than Matias, too.

The [wiki]i-Rocks switch[/wiki] is an attempt to do something along these lines, but I've never found any on sale and therefore I've never had any to test. It's based on the weird Dinglehopper contact system of unknown origin (cf [wiki]alps.tw Type T9[/wiki], and I've seen that contact design from another clone manufacturer over on KBDMania). I don't even know what alps.tw's exact involvement is, as nobody is willing to write up the project in English.

TL;DR: so long as it feels good, sounds good and lasts a long time, then it doesn't really matter what's inside of it.

[M4dn3ss]

The objective here is not to replicate the work of Alps precisely, but to replicate the feel: blue Alps was very smooth and had precise tactility, without the secondary bump found in simplified Alps and clones thereof.

I feel that it it's not necessary to replicate complicated Alps, but experience with Matias switches shows that you need to devise a contact system that's suitable. I've mentioned before that [wiki]USw LABI01[/wiki] has a stronger click (even in a plastic plate!) and a far more precise feel by far than SKBM/Matias switches, but it's too heavy. It's like white Alps, in that it just needs the force level turning down a bit. However, being a rare and unidentified switch, we have no idea about its longevity or overall reliability. It's so much smoother than Matias, too.

The [wiki]i-Rocks switch[/wiki] is an attempt to do something along these lines, but I've never found any on sale and therefore I've never had any to test. It's based on the weird Dinglehopper contact system of unknown origin (cf [wiki]alps.tw Type T9[/wiki], and I've seen that contact design from another clone manufacturer over on KBDMania). I don't even know what alps.tw's exact involvement is, as nobody is willing to write up the project in English.

TL;DR: so long as it feels good, sounds good and lasts a long time, then it doesn't really matter what's inside of it.

Yeah, of course there is almost certainly a way to make a completely new switch that takes the best aspects of complicated Alps switches, the question is how, and who is willing to invest in doing it?

The I-Rocks switches can be found in their K76M keyboard which can be picked up new on Ebay; I'd give it a go if I had money to burn, the other problem is you have no idea which switch you're getting as they don't say. The clickies don't sound all that great if this review is anything to go by: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d5L6SF-vh8 (see 4:00)
(but quiet, great if you want a quieter clicky switch)
Still it's a shame they aren't getting more attention because these could be the start of something great

XMIT's also been experimenting with click leaves for the next round of Hall effect keyboards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV9B341vFuA
Unfortunately they've still got that hollow sound but if we can find a way to improve it, these could be the new best thing.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

http://www.datacomp.com.tw/Products.asp?BigClassID=26

All three ALPS types have a tactile leaf, and are all click types rated at 70±25 gf.

[Polecat]

http://www.datacomp.com.tw/Products.asp?BigClassID=26

All three ALPS types have a tactile leaf, and are all click types rated at 70±25 gf.

Interesting. Exactly the same spec listed by Northgate for their white Alps SKCM switches in the Gen3 boards, see p.32 here:

w/images/3/38/Northgate_OmniKey_Users_Guide_Apr92.pdf

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Well, specifically, it's the same as [wiki]Alps SKBL/SKBM series[/wiki].

However, the details on the Datacomp website are clearly wrong. All three switches cannot differ only by colour, as that would be silly.

[Polecat]

Well, specifically, it's the same as [wiki]Alps SKBL/SKBM series[/wiki].

Hmmm. Wiki says SKBL/SKBM came out circa 1996. The Northgate manual listing the spec is dated April, 1992.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Datacomp switches are in effect a continuation of SKBL/SKBM (they bought the tooling from Forward). However, SKBL/SKBM was only 10 M cycles, while SKCL/SKCM was 20 M; Datacomp are citing 20 M for their switches. SKBL/SKCM came out in 1991 I think, according to Forward; I was hoping they'd be able to find some old documentation to prove this, but I've not heard back since. The wiki page for SKBL/SKBM is pending a few adjustments when I'm ready — hopefully soon.

[Chyros]

So we all know it's not complicated Alps, which is a disappointment, but I'm wondering (against all odds): could they at least replicate the SOUND? If they managed to at least make that work, I think that'd be a major selling point.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I'm not disappointed about it not being complicated Alps, since that was obviously not going to happen. What would be funny though is to buy up that 80,000 or whatever it was NOS SKCCAF switches and harvest the switchplates from them. Would still only make just over 1200 60% keyboards though.

[rich1051414]

If it isn't complicated, but they are using complicated colors, I have a negative opinion right out of the gate. I hope it is good, but it will have to be very good for me to get over my initial bias against it, as it seems insincere if they feel they need to boosted by the reputation of the originals. Almost feels insulting, as if they think we won't know better. It's a bad idea. Basically all they can do is taint the switch if they bring it back but don't give it what people actually liked it for.