Found an odd keyboard

BurnPotatoes · 29 Oct 2015, 23:22

Hello guys,

A few years ago, I bought this very, very old Bondwell B200 (introduced in 1985). Of course, the battery is shot so it won't power on without the charger connected. One of the floppy drives has died as well, but that's it. For the rest it works perfectly. Yes, it runs DOS 6.11, booted from a floppy. Harddrive? Internet? Whatsthat? Why I bought this? I liked the classic Apple sticker on top...
I always enjoyed typing on this thing, never really realizing why. It went properly click and clack. I bought it before I bought my first mech board. Today, however, I thought I'd take a look. I was comparing some MX Browns to a Bakker Elkhuizen S-board 840 USB (types surprisingly nice for a scissor board - it needs 75 grams to trigger) anyways, so I thought I'd give the old guy a shot as well. I expected to find some weird and old mech switches of which no one had ever heard after the late 70's-80's. I was wrong. Very wrong. This old notebook houses 79 Cherry MX Blue switches for the usual keys and two Amber Omron B3G-S switches for the space bar and Enter. The pictures.
FWIW: I never ever cleaned the keys. They might be a good 30 years old...

Because I really like typing on this keyboard, I would like to convert it to USB or PS/2 (whichever's more practical). How would I go on about this? I could use the board as-is, connect a Teeny to it and edit some firmware to make it compatible with this odd board (I might make it sound like I have experience - I don't.) However, the top of the PCB contains some stuff I don't need: two floppy drive activity LEDs, a power on LED, a charging LED and a switch to set the contrast of the display. This means that I also could desolder the current PCB and make a matrix myself and connect a Teeny to that. How I incorporate the metal back into a proper keyboard housing is a question for later, I guess. Or are there any other possibilities?

What would you guys advice? I am fairly new to the world of mechanical keyboards, because the one I do have just came in a box, plain and simple. I have some soldering experience, certainly the soldering equipment, quite some experience with computers, but not too much with programming microcontrollers. Before you tell me to RTFM: I've started already

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ramnes · 30 Oct 2015, 00:54

I would advice to desolder the nice vintage MX blue switches and put them on a proper modern PCB, but some people here are going to yell at me.

On a more serious note, this is the first time I see Cherry MX and Omron switches on the same board. That's really cool.

elecplus · 30 Oct 2015, 04:52

I have a Bondwell B310 keyboard and motherboard, also Cherry blues. Very nice blues! The screen died or was cracked, I forget which, so all that is left now is the motherboard and keyboard. Bondwells were very solid laptops, in their day. Top of the line, not really meant for the average consumer.

BurnPotatoes · 30 Oct 2015, 11:14

ramnes wrote: I would advice to desolder the nice vintage MX blue switches and put them on a proper modern PCB, but some people here are going to yell at me.

On a more serious note, this is the first time I see Cherry MX and Omron switches on the same board. That's really cool.

I thought it was cool as well, primarily because they just mixed not only types of switches, but even brands.
Say I want to desolder: How do I go about putting these switches on a PCB? The layout is rather different than your average keyboard (see the big one and the tiny tab), so finding a pre-built PCB is going to be hard or even impossible. That would mean I have to make my own PCB. I talked to someone who made a lot of PCB's, but he told me this is not an easy board to duplicate. It is a rather advanced single-layer board according to him. If I want to use the caps and the switches, however, that is my only option. Or I reuse this PCB, but that means I'm stuck with the big part poking out at the top.

It seems like my best option indeed is making a PCB myself. Sadly, I myself have no experience with this whatsoever, so it will take a long time before I have something. I was told Design Sparc is my best shot. Unless, of course, there is a way to get prefab boards with this layout. But I think that is highly unlikely, for it combines Cherry and Omron.

Here's by the way how the keyboard was connected to the motherboard: http://mcbx-pictures.comxa.com/gal/Muse ... 00/016.jpg

elecplus wrote: I have a Bondwell B310 keyboard and motherboard, also Cherry blues. Very nice blues! The screen died or was cracked, I forget which, so all that is left now is the motherboard and keyboard. Bondwells were very solid laptops, in their day. Top of the line, not really meant for the average consumer.

I already thought something like that. It's built very well. No sharp edges, high quality caps, nice and reachable screws - it was a very fun thing to dismantle.

jacobolus · 30 Oct 2015, 12:28

The one annoying thing about these Bondwell laptop keyboards is that the stagger is non-standard.

At some point last year HaaTa bought a replacement Bondwell keyboard which used orange Omrons for all the keys. Not sure if he put any pics up.

Earlier Bondwell laptops used Alps switches (heavy linear SKCL switches https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=54255.0, and the ones before that used SFKL).

HzFaq · 30 Oct 2015, 12:44

Trace the matrix and hook it up to a teensy (or your controller of choice) if you want to use it as is.

Nice little board/laptop that, great find.

Engicoder · 30 Oct 2015, 15:16

jacobolus wrote: The one annoying thing about these Bondwell laptop keyboards is that the stagger is non-standard.

At some point last year HaaTa bought a replacement Bondwell keyboard which used orange Omrons for all the keys. Not sure if he put any pics up.

Earlier Bondwell laptops used Alps switches (heavy linear SKCL switches https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=54255.0, and the ones before that used SFKL).

The OCD side of me kind of likes their non-standard stagger. All the alphas use the same stagger. Kind of wish they would have gone all the way and fixed the number row as well

mr_a500 · 30 Oct 2015, 22:46

BurnPotatoes wrote: A few years ago, I bought this very, very old Bondwell B200 (introduced in 1985).

I'm a bit disturbed that you think something from 1985 is "very, very old".

klikkyklik · 30 Oct 2015, 22:47

I'm glad you mentioned that, because ... well, what does that make ME?!

XMIT · 30 Oct 2015, 23:43

klikkyklik wrote: I'm glad you mentioned that, because ... well, what does that make ME?!

Also very,very old. I am in this category as well.

klikkyklik · 30 Oct 2015, 23:52

XMIT wrote:
klikkyklik wrote: I'm glad you mentioned that, because ... well, what does that make ME?!
Also very,very old. I am in this category as well.

If you are "very, very old" then I'm ... ancient.

webwit · 31 Oct 2015, 00:28

Vintage.

klikkyklik · 31 Oct 2015, 00:40

webwit wrote: Vintage.

Nice! I need a shirt that says "Best before 2000" or some such.

fohat · 31 Oct 2015, 02:27

mr_a500 wrote:
I'm a bit disturbed that you think something from 1985 is "very, very old".

That was the year I got my first computer. I wish I still had it.

An "AT clone" 80286 from PCs Limited. It had a 10MB hard drive and a full 1MB of RAM! Cost almost $3K without a printer.

Michael Dell probably built it himself, or was in the room when it was assembled.

mr_a500 · 31 Oct 2015, 03:06

fohat wrote:
mr_a500 wrote:
I'm a bit disturbed that you think something from 1985 is "very, very old".

That was the year I got my first computer. I wish I still had it.

I thought you were older than that. You must be one of the young guys.

By 1985, I had already written programs on at least 5 different computers. I consider anything beyond 1985 to be "modern".

Muirium · 31 Oct 2015, 03:33

Pfft. Glass terminals are modern.

Not that I experienced anything older than 8 bit computers myself. Besides the old manual typewriters that taught me accursed Qwerty…

BurnPotatoes · 31 Oct 2015, 12:35

Hahaha, calm down guys and ladies. I was just saying that a 30 year old laptop is old - not humans

A 5 year old computer is often already regarded as old, so a 30 year old laptop could be seen as very, very old.

Muirium · 31 Oct 2015, 14:42

2010 computers are old!? Madness! They're barely out of kindergarten.

Plasmodium · 31 Oct 2015, 15:51

Ah, but there's 'old' and then there's 'old', isn't there? My laptop is coming up to 4 years old and I'm considering replacing it because it's not powerful enough for the games I (occasionally, these days) want to play and because the hardware is getting a bit unreliable (BSODs on Windows and related freezes etc on Linux).

That's a different 'old' to a retro terminal that was used for a number of years 30 years ago, then put in a box/museum/collection/whatever. I'm not going to go into build quality, as I don't know enough about historic computers to say definitively that they were better built than my 2011 ASUS, but I would rather expect so.

At the same time, I'll keep my laptop as an emergency backup, and then probably forget about it until 2040 when I'll find it at the bottom of a wardrobe and go "wow, look at that aluminium lid! How retro is that! And, goodness, 6gb of RAM, how did I ever get by on that!" etc.

BurnPotatoes · 01 Nov 2015, 20:12

Back to the keyboard again: I'll first try to get the thing going as-is (with a Teensy and breadboard) and after that I'll see what I can do. I'd love to create a PCB with this layout and caps, on which I then can solder a Teensy. This way I could use the retroness of the switches and caps, combined with the beauty of a small PCB.