A mysterious vintage Alps SKCC Cream spherical terminal keyboard

[Mr.Nobody]

I hope I've those adjectives in the title arranged in the right order...

I mentioned this keyboard days ago under the "Identify the keyboard" thread.Seebart said I should open a new thread for this keyboard, so...Here is the original content:

I have gotten the keyboard... holy cow...extremely thick case and the QC stamp indicates it might be made in 26th October 1958(at least to Chinese and Japanese people, it means this. ) had computer been invented at the time?

Spoiler:

I wonder if this keyboard is convertable, and anybody knows what kind of computer it's intended for?

[seebart]

Very nice! Obviously manufactured by Alps Electric Japan. If you look at the PCB it's got very few integrated circuits on the rather small PCB, possibly the controller for the keyboard was in the terminal. The keycaps and the keycap profile look exactly like my Tatung 71739. I'd say this keyboard is from the early to mid 1980's. Interesting layout with those two arrow keys on the left. "HIF2B-40D" is a 40 Position Ribbon Cable from Hirose Electric but that won't tell us anything. "13339103-OOC" on the PCB is interesting...

[Daniel Beardsmore]

1983

http://seinenkai.com/articles/dates.html

[Mr.Nobody]

@seebart & Daniel

You guys are freakin' awesome... I am confident the mystery will be solved by DT keyboardologists.

Edit:
I completely forgot that the Japanese folks have this empiror's year stuff which Chinese empirors used to have. You know, empirors are full of themselves. call me Mr. Nobody I

No controller on the keyboard PCB, does this mean "easier to convert" ? It seems only 9 pins are used.

[seebart]

No controller on the keyboard PCB, does this mean "easier to convert" ? It seems only 9 pins are used.

Unbenannt.PNG (54.56 KiB) Viewed 6799 times

[fohat]

I hope I've those adjectives in the title arranged in the right order...

Standard order of adjectives in English:

1 Quantity or number
2 Quality or opinion
3 Size
4 Age
5 Shape
6 Color
7 Proper adjective (eg name, place of origin, material)
8 Purpose or qualifier

So I would use:

mysterious - quality/opinion
vintage - age
spherical - shape
cream - color
Alps SKCC - proper adjective
terminal - purpose/qualifier

unless you consider "Alps SKCC Cream spherical" as a single unit

[Mr.Nobody]

A mysterious vintage Alps SKCC Cream spherical terminal keyboard
A mysterious vintage spherical Cream Alps SKCC terminal keyboard
A mysterious vintage spherical Alps SKCC cream terminal keyboard

maybe we got used to MX blue, Alpe white....so it sounds weired say Blue MX, White Alpse, Cream Alps....my brain has been fucked up by this....

[Daniel Beardsmore]

No controller on the keyboard PCB, does this mean "easier to convert" ? It seems only 9 pins are used.

The BBC Micro keyboard has visually the same concept, where the keyboard has operational circuitry but no controller. Some of the controller functionality is in the chips, and the rest is built into the operating system. You can see details of the BBC Micro keyboard circuit and operation here:

http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=62962.0

If you wanted to use a BBC Micro keyboard, you'd need special hardware to communicate with the keyboard.

I have no idea what your keyboard provides, but the suggestion is that is does something similar. You'd have to study what each of the chips does to get some idea of how you'd communicate with the circuit overall.

I guess this would make it harder, as with a controller onboard you at least have a chance of getting actual scancodes out of it.

[Mr.Nobody]

@Danial
Worst scenario, desolder the PCB and solder wires and diodes to make a matrix and use teensy as a controller...which is also rather hard for me, but thanks to the matto3's thread in Workshop section...

[Mr.Nobody]

one of the buyer has converted the keyboard already, well that's fast...within 5 days...

Spoiler:

[Daniel Beardsmore]

A buyer? You sold the keyboard on to someone else?

[Mr.Nobody]

A buyer? You sold the keyboard on to someone else?

No, the original seller has many on hand, and many people have bought from him, so there are other buyers besides me...I think I've mentioned this in my first post under "Identify the keyboard" thread, the first day, the seller sold 30 pieces of this model...

EDIT:
The seller told me: one of the buyers on the first day of selling ordered 10 pieces at once, I don't know if this is brag or truth, but he did show me a pile of keyboards of this model ready for packing and shipping...after seeing the photo, I put my order without hesitation.

[mr_a500]

A NOS Alps SKCC keyboard with awesome spherical double shot keycaps, in a nice thick case for $30 and it can be converted... What I don't get is why nobody is freaking out over this. I expected a mad rush, with people trampling their own mothers just to get one. (I'd easily trample my own mother for one of these.)

We need to find a way to ship these before they're all gone, damn it.

[Mr.Nobody]

Maybe, just like the IBM pingmaster keyboards on Ebay, the board itself is a real bargin but after plus the shipping it is not anymore...it's 2.383 Kg, net weight.

[mr_a500]

I've always found shipping from China to Canada way cheaper than USA to Canada for some reason.

I was one of the first people to buy one of those IBM pingmaster keyboards, by the way. (before it even got the "pingmaster" name)

[Mr.Nobody]

Guess what, I bought over the converted one, and I am typing with it now... now my BUD tenet is kept, beautiful, usable, and durable...



Edit:
The dude who converted this board is the buyer who bought 10 pieces at one time from the original seller. Sadly, he told me 4 of those were damaged during shipping. The original seller didn't care enough to pack the boards properly.