Tandberg TDV 2200 S series

[gcardinal]

Got another exiting "barn find", this time its TDV 2200 S series keyboard from ND 320 computer.

I actually also got PC it was ment for, so did some testing and all keys work as well as the LED (or at least the ones I understood how to turn on / off).

Same as my TDV 5000 it has Siemens switches - but now with red stems and quite different overall design.
However key caps are interchangeable with TDV 5000

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Actuall LED stick out of keyboard and do light up quite brightly.

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It has what looks like a cast connector:

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Next step is clean up and trying to figure out a way to connect it to a modern world PC.

Have to say that I find great interest in Tandberg keyboard, might end up collecting them.

[Chyros]

Oooh, nice, never seen red Siemenses before =o . What do they feel like?

[seebart]

Awesome find, great colors.

[OleVoip]

These are STB 11 keys. I don't know the exact date when they disappeared, but the switches with red plungers were made at least until the mid 1980s. I don't know for sure what the red colour is supposed to indicate - early catalogues do not list colours and late catalogues do, but red is not on the list. I've got keyboards where the latching variant is black and the nonlatching red. The red switches I have are of the less tactile variant (65 cN activation), whereas the black nonlatching switches I have are more tactile (75 cN) - but this might be a selection effect since they are from that later period when red plungers were no longer made.
I remember having pulled a cap from an early Tandberg with the heavier variant but, damned, I can't seem to remember the colour of the plunger - it was back in 1981.
@gcardinal: Can you please tell us which is more tactile: the red ones of this board or the white ones of your TDV 5000?

edit: Reconsidering the evidence, I've come to the conclusion that red plungers really were used to tell the less tactile variant (65 cN, 4mm travel) from the the heavier black one (75 cN, 4mm travel).

[gcardinal]

Oooh, nice, never seen red Siemenses before =o . What do they feel like?

In short - quite close to NovaTouch TKL - maybe just a touch heavier and a lot quieter. Also very stable and with travel more similar to shutter release on a photo camera then a normal keyboard.

...
@gcardinal: Can you please tell us which is more tactile: the red ones of this board or the white ones of your TDV 5000?

Thank you so much for the background information!

And a difficult question - indeed the white ones in TDV 5000 feel heavier and tactile feel more pronounced than in red ones.

I think the best way to describe the white ones that they feel like 3 stage switch with initial push, which is light, a bumb which requires some more force and quite stiff travel to the bottom. Third stage after the bump feel like vintage black cherry mx.

The red ones have the same 3 stage construction, however the feel of the bump in the second stage is quite light and hard to notice when typing.

All in all red feel just lighter then white ones - not as light as red cherry mx but much lighter then cherry mx black. Compared to TDV 5000 overall key travel of red switches feels much shorter - where white ones on TDV 5000 are almost endless.

[OleVoip]

Thanks for your reply - except for the travel, it exactly matches my impression.

[Redmaus]

Just like red APC switches, I love the look of these sliders. I kind of want to dye alps stems now to make them look cooler.

[FrodeM]

I'm sorry this might be a bit late, but I did successfully figure out how to interface this keyboard last year.

The keyboard is for a terminal, designed for the Norsk Data Nord-100, and it originally connected to a screen with an RS-232 serial port interface. However, the interface between the keyboard and the screen is based on a RS-422 serial port pair. I don't remember the pinout exactly, but RX is two pins, TX is two pins, and then there is VCC (+5V) and GND in addition to the earthed shield. A spesific pinout can easily be found using a multimeter, you just need to know the pinout of the RS-422 line-buffer chips.

The serial protocol is regular UART, with a low start bit and 8 data bits. When sending data to the keyboard, you use 600 baud, while you use 2400 baud for receiving data from the keyboard.

The data sent from the keyboard are pure ASCII codes, of the keys that are actuated, some keys sending with repetition if the key is held, but everything is not ASCII. Most non-typewriter keys and all non-ASCII keys have the 8'th bit set, even when there are ASCII control codes matching the key's function. On this particular keyboard, there's so many keys that certain keys even send a 0xFF escape followed by its "extended" code.

Data sent to the keyboard is mostly for turning LEDs on and off, and other small things like enabling/disabling the keyboard speaker, expansion module, or key-repetition.

[wiesener]

I'm sorry this might be a bit late, but I did successfully figure out how to interface this keyboard last year.

The keyboard is for a terminal, designed for the Norsk Data Nord-100, and it originally connected to a screen with an RS-232 serial port interface. However, the interface between the keyboard and the screen is based on a RS-422 serial port pair. I don't remember the pinout exactly, but RX is two pins, TX is two pins, and then there is VCC (+5V) and GND in addition to the earthed shield. A spesific pinout can easily be found using a multimeter, you just need to know the pinout of the RS-422 line-buffer chips.

The serial protocol is regular UART, with a low start bit and 8 data bits. When sending data to the keyboard, you use 600 baud, while you use 2400 baud for receiving data from the keyboard.

The data sent from the keyboard are pure ASCII codes, of the keys that are actuated, some keys sending with repetition if the key is held, but everything is not ASCII. Most non-typewriter keys and all non-ASCII keys have the 8'th bit set, even when there are ASCII control codes matching the key's function. On this particular keyboard, there's so many keys that certain keys even send a 0xFF escape followed by its "extended" code.

Data sent to the keyboard is mostly for turning LEDs on and off, and other small things like enabling/disabling the keyboard speaker, expansion module, or key-repetition.

That's cool! I just bought one of these yesterday, will pick it up today. I'm very excited, it should be brand new in the original box...!

My goal is to use this as my everyday keyboard for my PC. I reckon I will not be able to use this directly on a PS/2 port, so I was thinking of going with an arduino configured as a USB keyboard, possibly with some sort of RS422 board attached. Did you design/build something like that for yourself? Are there any other pitfalls or caveats to be wary of?

[wiesener]

Received it today and it is indeed new in the original packaging. Even smells new!

https://imgur.com/gallery/T01eiGs

https://imgur.com/gallery/BnzAqLc