This is the Track House Standard IIe Tender Keypad for the Apple IIe.
- Standard-IIe-Tender.jpg (332.54 KiB) Viewed 905 times
The ink has worn off, but the company name is embossed on the rubber insert in the upper-left and almost visible in the photo, as well as printed on the back label.
- Standard-IIe-Tender-label.jpg (377.86 KiB) Viewed 905 times
I has some so-so double-shot keycaps and plate-mounted switches that I don't recognize. There are no active components inside; the AMP connector has a date code for 1984, which seems about right.
- Standard-IIe-Tender-top.jpg (358.81 KiB) Viewed 905 times
It has unshifted parentheses, though I have to suppose they were for negative entries in accounting. I am not sure why a
? warranted space. It probably did something significant in the accompanying software.
It connected to a parallel port via a DB-25, which ends up being pretty wasteful. Some of the connector pins are left out. That AMP connector has 26 conductors; 5 of its pins aren't even soldered in; others are connected to the DB-25, but otherwise don't do anything. The 13 that are connected give a 8x5 matrix, so up to 40 switches. There are only 27 actual switches.
It's trivial to implement as a standard
QMK matrix. Since we can pick the voltage, a Teensy LC will do.
- Standard-IIe-Tender-converter.jpg (652.98 KiB) Viewed 905 times
Normally, this wouldn't be worth much attention, even with a few interesting choices of key legends. But the PCB itself is pretty remarkable.
- Standard-IIe-Tender-PCB.jpg (422.09 KiB) Viewed 905 times
Compare it with The Keyboard Company's more-or-less equivalent Numeric Keypad IIe from the
wiki or its later
rebranding which saved some copper.
