Vintage hall effect keyboards for gaming?

[PlacaFromHell]

Hello. I would appreciate it if someone can tell me how good would be for example a keyboard with Micro Switch SD1A3S switches for gaming. I enjoy using Cherry vintage black switches from the 80s and I tried very smooth Cifra switches composed of no more than two springs to make contact, anyway, I had no one opportunity to try hall effect switches. I know that there are not any yet converter for Honeywell or Micro Switch keyboards and less for other weird hall effect keyboards, but would be good for gaming if they were usable?
I would also like to know if dual magnet switches use magnetic fields instead springs (that would make them really cool).

[codemonkeymike]

Hello. I would appreciate it if someone can tell me how good would be for example a keyboard with Micro Switch SD1A3S switches for gaming. I enjoy using Cherry vintage black switches from the 80s and I tried very smooth Cifra switches composed of no more than two springs to make contact, anyway, I had no one opportunity to try hall effect switches. I know that there are not any yet converter for Honeywell or Micro Switch keyboards and less for other weird hall effect keyboards, but would be good for gaming if they were usable?
I would also like to know if dual magnet switches use magnetic fields instead springs (that would make them really cool).

Most of these hall effect keyboards are designed to be 1 or 2 key rollover as far as I know. So it is essentially useless for gaming. As for the dual magnet switches, I think that is to generate a stronger magnetic field to register on the hall effect sensor not to replace a spring.

[orihalcon]

Apparently some switches support NKRO with the right setup, but since they are so hard to convert for the time being, I would shift the focus more on being able to make them usable at all before deciding if they would be good for gaming.

I don't know of a magnetic repulsion switch where magnetic fields provide the "return spring," though sounds like an interesting concept. I know there are magnetic separation switches by Univac, but even those have an internal spring to return to neutral position.

[PlacaFromHell]

Thanks guys! Anyway, the switches themself would be good for that purpose?

[codemonkeymike]

Thanks guys! Anyway, the switches themself would be good for that purpose?

No not really, unless your going to be designing some circuitry. As far as I know no one has made a custom keyboard with some honeywell switches. Leave the hall effect boards together, no need to destroy a piece of history and something that may be convertible in the future.

[orihalcon]

Conversion can already be done, Dorkvader is pretty good at it. I would say that it requires quite a bit of expertise and would still consider the conversion not quite simple enough for most of us to do, at least the way that it is currently described. I will say that is a little intimidating and I don't fully understand it enough to try it on my own, though I am no electrical engineer.

It may even support NKRO which isn't mentioned in the thread.

See his thread here: https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=89262.0

[codemonkeymike]

Conversion can already be done, Dorkvader is pretty good at it. I would say that it requires quite a bit of expertise and would still consider the conversion not quite simple enough for most of us to do, at least the way that it is currently described. I will say that is a little intimidating and I don't fully understand it enough to try it on my own, though I am no electrical engineer.

It may even support NKRO which isn't mentioned in the thread.

See his thread here: https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=89262.0

I was under the impression based on other threads that the num pad is a bit of a special case as it has no logic chips on the board.

[Slom]

NKRO or not is a property of boards/pcbs, not switches

It is also known how to convert these ASCII boards with 1kro. But because they are probably useless even for fast typing, let alone gaming, nobody here has done it yet.

As to the question of the OP: I doubt that these would be good gaming switches, I feel that they are on the heavy side, also no coloured LEDs

BUT, if you really have a board with 1A3S, then it might have a normal matrix and be easily convertible ...

[orihalcon]

Should still be scalable to a full size keyboard. Keypad is simpler just because it only has a 4x4 matrix. I read the thread a little closer and it appears that Dorkvader says that it *Should* have NKRO, but didn't confirm if the end result was that or not, but at least should be theoretically possible.

Will require a hand wired matrix no matter what you do, so I think and you probably would need to cut the original PCB traces to avoid interference from the original circuitry. Dorkvader has converted other full size boards as well as I recall. XMIT has done it as well, but his iteration had 2KRO and still didn't seem that straightforward to do unfortunately.

[Slom]

Will require a hand wired matrix no matter what you do, so I think and you probably would need to cut the original PCB traces to avoid interference from the original circuitry.

Burn the heretic

Dorkvader has converted other full size boards as well as I recall.

Links or it didnt happen ...

XMIT has done it as well, but his iteration had 2KRO and still didn't seem that straightforward to do unfortunately.

Same ...

[Slom]

BUT, if you really have a board with 1A3S, then it might have a normal matrix and be easily convertible ...

To be more specific: the TI silent terminals have

a) no logic chips on the keyboards
b) 1A3S switches
c) are known to come with other switches as well (HiTek)

I doubt that they different hardware on the main logic board for the different keyboards, also the manual talks about scanning a matrix. And finally, according to the honeywell documentation, the switches xxxS are of the Scan variant, ie. specifically designed to support scanning matrix designs.

[PlacaFromHell]

That's quite intriguing, maybe my teachers of digital electronic could help me if I found one of these. I did not finish understanding if the switches itself are good for gaming (As I said, I never tried hall effect boards).
From what I could understand the switches work with a kind of transistor that when detects a magnetic field sends an output proportional to the field strength. In theory, the output should grow as the magnet gets closer. I imagine that if you put some diodes in the output pin you could convert the switch itself to digital using potential barriers and maybe get NKRO (just supposing, don't punch me in the face). And what follows is just attach a converter.
I found a TI terminal with possible Micro Switch SD switches, but not worth at all. Better look in other places.

https://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ar/ML ... rminal-_JM

[Slom]

That's quite intriguing, maybe my teachers of digital electronic could help me if I found one of these. I did not finish understanding if the switches itself are good for gaming (As I said, I never tried hall effect boards).
From what I could understand the switches work with a kind of transistor that when detects a magnetic field sends an output proportional to the field strength. In theory, the output should grow as the magnet gets closer. I imagine that if you put some diodes in the output pin you could convert the switch itself to digital using potential barriers and maybe get NKRO (just supposing, don't punch me in the face). And what follows is just attach a converter.
I found a TI terminal with possible Micro Switch SD switches, but not worth at all. Better look in other places.

https://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ar/ML ... rminal-_JM

The Micro Switch switches are already digital They have little chips inside the switches which do the analog to digital conversion. Ask wikipedia about the details of Hall Effect sensing, that's not something I understand

That's a nice board, with APL caps even, but 8000$??? That's way to much, these should be somewhere in the 20$-50$ range I guess ...

Last word of warning, in my experience you have a about 50% chance of getting fucking scratchy SD switches. And these can not be opened and cleaned

[Slom]

I did not finish understanding if the switches itself are good for gaming (As I said, I never tried hall effect boards).

I guess that's not easy to tell, depends a lot on personal taste. And I think nobody has any experience using these for gaming

You should want Micro Switch keyboards for the really awesome keycaps, that's the real reason

[PlacaFromHell]

That's quite intriguing, maybe my teachers of digital electronic could help me if I found one of these. I did not finish understanding if the switches itself are good for gaming (As I said, I never tried hall effect boards).
From what I could understand the switches work with a kind of transistor that when detects a magnetic field sends an output proportional to the field strength. In theory, the output should grow as the magnet gets closer. I imagine that if you put some diodes in the output pin you could convert the switch itself to digital using potential barriers and maybe get NKRO (just supposing, don't punch me in the face). And what follows is just attach a converter.
I found a TI terminal with possible Micro Switch SD switches, but not worth at all. Better look in other places.

https://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ar/ML ... rminal-_JM

The Micro Switch switches are already digital They have little chips inside the switches which do the analog to digital conversion. Ask wikipedia about the details of Hall Effect sensing, that's not something I understand

That's a nice board, with APL caps even, but 8000$??? That's way to much, these should be somewhere in the 20$-50$ range I guess ...

Last word of warning, in my experience you have a about 50% chance of getting fucking scratchy SD switches. And these can not be opened and cleaned

Not 8000 U$D, they are like 470 U$D. Anyway, still not worth. I still not played all my cards to found them, so let's pray to Buckethead for a good hunting

[Slom]

BUT, if you really have a board with 1A3S, then it might have a normal matrix and be easily convertible ...

To be more specific: the TI silent terminals have

a) no logic chips on the keyboards
b) 1A3S switches
c) are known to come with other switches as well (HiTek)

I doubt that they different hardware on the main logic board for the different keyboards, also the manual talks about scanning a matrix. And finally, according to the honeywell documentation, the switches xxxS are of the Scan variant, ie. specifically designed to support scanning matrix designs.

I just traced my TI 745, the inner pins on the HE chips do indeed form a nice 7x8 matrix

I still not played all my cards to found them, so let's pray to Buckethead for a good hunting

Keep searching These do not seem to be that rare ...

[rich1051414]

Why vintage? Modern hall effect exist and they are indeed excellent for gaming. The downside, however, is they are very clacky and rattly. I am talking about the xmit hall effect keyboard.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

RAFI still make Hall effect switches. They're compact and nicely weighted, and smooth. The ones that don't accept LEDs are downstroke damped, but if you want backlighting you have to forego the damping, as the landing ring would partially obscure the LED holes in the base.

The only downside with RAFI (besides the price!) is the keycap mount.

[PlacaFromHell]

RAFI still make Hall effect switches. They're compact and nicely weighted, and smooth. The ones that don't accept LEDs are downstroke damped, but if you want backlighting you have to forego the damping, as the landing ring would partially obscure the LED holes in the base.

The only downside with RAFI (besides the price!) is the keycap mount.

I didn't know that. I hate backlighting and any kind of lights so no problem. For the keycaps, I have a Siemens telephonic keyboard to harvest (without damaging the keyboard obviously). Do you know where to buy them?

Why vintage? Modern hall effect exist and they are indeed excellent for gaming. The downside, however, is they are very clacky and rattly. I am talking about the xmit hall effect keyboard.

I have many reasons to not buy a modern hall effect keyboard. In my country the customs are a problem, I can pass things like switches, converters and keycaps but not keyboards (sometimes everything is in order but they take advantage the of size and weight to charge you ridiculous prices and and hope you do not pay it in order to steal your product). I don't like mondern keyboads at all, the lights, construction, keycaps, etc.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

You would need to select a suitable distributor or reseller. The series is [wiki]RAFI RS 76 C[/wiki]. I have a few samples, and they feel promising, but just as I was writing about them, XMIT's Hall effect project showed up, offering Chinese slave labour prices and (as I recall) Cherry MX keycap mounts, but the switches seem horribly clattery. However, they're over €3/switch (over €4/switch for illuminated) — you'd need to buy a lot of them to get any reasonable discount, with an order of 3000 seeing a discount of 2–3%.

As for Siemens×RAFI, I've yet to get around to phase II of comparing keycap mounts. I still only have only a portion of the total gamut (Siemens, RAFI, ITW and Sasse keycaps and switches) so it may be some years before I have enough parts to fully understand and document the mount compatibility. I still need ITW switches and caps and Siemens caps.

[rich1051414]

You would need to select a suitable distributor or reseller. The series is [wiki]RAFI RS 76 C[/wiki]. I have a few samples, and they feel promising, but just as I was writing about them, XMIT's Hall effect project showed up, offering Chinese slave labour prices and (as I recall) Cherry MX keycap mounts, but the switches seem horribly clattery. However, they're over €3/switch (over €4/switch for illuminated) — you'd need to buy a lot of them to get any reasonable discount, with an order of 3000 seeing a discount of 2–3%.

As for Siemens×RAFI, I've yet to get around to phase II of comparing keycap mounts. I still only have only a portion of the total gamut (Siemens, RAFI, ITW and Sasse keycaps and switches) so it may be some years before I have enough parts to fully understand and document the mount compatibility. I still need ITW switches and caps and Siemens caps.

Oh, they are clattery xD A whole new level of clattery. Throw a handful of keycaps in a cardboard box and shake it up, and that is the basically what they sound like when going to town on them. However, they are butter smooth and lack any hysteresis, so they would be great for gaming, as long as you don't have an open mic.

[PlacaFromHell]

I heard that the keycap mounts are the same for the switches I have and RAFI ones. Mine is one similar to this:
http://www.500kprojects.com/uploads/4/0 ... 6_orig.jpg
I didn't found the exactly keyboard but the switches and mounts are these
http://i.imgur.com/rvAjTDL.jpg
Better go for the RAIF's, looks like the most suitable option.

[Elrick]

I don't like mondern keyboads at all, the lights, construction, keycaps, etc.

That is why WE are all here on DT Central .

The Home of REAL Keyboards....