Televideo 950 (Futaba MD)

ScottPaladin · 20 Apr 2018, 03:54

This came in the mail after a very late night impulse buy.

Futaba MD switches with some slick spherical doubleshots. I thought these might fit on my pingmaster, (word on the street it's a fit, but very tight) But I'm out of luck.

I love that they put the main controller in a socket.

There're also a lot of unpopulated spots on the PCB; wonder what the story is there.

Since I can't use the caps, I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with this. I feel confident that I could do a full conversion and restoration, but I'm pretty unhappy with the MDs,

andrea-i · 20 Apr 2018, 13:49

too bad the switches are not that great, was looking at that model yesterday night as well eheh : D
It's a really nice layout!

seebart · 20 Apr 2018, 13:55

One again you have good taste in vintage keyboards ScottPaladin !

zslane · 20 Apr 2018, 18:39

I used to use one of these--it actually belonged to a friend/roommate of mine from high school/college--back in the day, and I recall it had a relatively short key travel. It was noticeably shorter than the key travel of the CDC-713 I was used to.

pyrelink · 20 Apr 2018, 20:24

Nice board Scott. While Futaba Complicated Linears are pretty far from a favorite switch of mine, I don't totally detest them

Besides the case yellowing, it looks like it was a very well maintained specimen. Nice pickup!

ScottPaladin · 20 Apr 2018, 20:53

zslane wrote: I used to use one of these--it actually belonged to a friend/roommate of mine from high school/college--back in the day, and I recall it had a relatively short key travel. It was noticeably shorter than the key travel of the CDC-713 I was used to.

"Short, stiff, and scratchy" is how I'd describe them. Definitely not my favorite combination of attributes in a switch. I'm sort of curious if they would be improved with some lubricant, but I think that would require desoldering the lot of them. The layout is a bit charming, and I'm a sucker for spherical caps with weird legends.

pyrelink wrote: Nice board Scott. While Futaba Complicated Linears are pretty far from a favorite switch of mine, I don't totally detest them

Besides the case yellowing, it looks like it was a very well maintained specimen. Nice pickup!

Yeah, pretty seriously yellowed and it's actually pretty dirty. I pulled some dust bunnies out of the case that were big as a bullfrog and probably old enough to vote. And there's some gunk on the "BREAK" keycap. Other than that, though, it's good. I think I'm gonna mull this one over while I work on some other projects. At the very worst, I'll spend some time on the wall.

Sangdrax · 26 Apr 2018, 15:21

Seemed to me from fiddling with my Futaba board that they are pretty sensitive to dust like alps and similar things. You really can't lube the lighter ones either because they won't return right. New ones are smooth. But you're other observations are pretty similar to what I've seen. Key activation is very short, then the force ramps up like crazy so you hardly every get the full travel and bottom out. It's very strange but you get used to it after a few days.

It's less than $30 to replace all the switches on that with NOS ones though, so I'd sure consider it if you decide to restore it or convert it down the road. It's got nice keycaps and a usable layout so that's a big plus when it comes to old terminal stuff. Cool board, all told.

ScottPaladin · 26 Apr 2018, 15:37

Sangdrax wrote: It's less than $30 to replace all the switches on that with NOS ones though, so I'd sure consider it if you decide to restore it or convert it down the road.F.

Finding some NOS switches briefly occurred to me, but I had done any digging yet. Are we talking taobao?

Sangdrax · 26 Apr 2018, 15:51

https://www.electronicsurplus.com/futab ... kage-of-20

$3 for 20. Shipping is kinda high, but I got 120 NOS shipped for like $27 total. Imagine if they used USPS first class instead of flat rate boxes. You could redo a whole board for like $20 shipped.

ScottPaladin · 26 Apr 2018, 17:07

In for a penny, in for a pound. Ordered (found a couple of old school DPDT swithces for my Heathkit project too). Thanks, Sangdrax.

ScottPaladin · 27 Apr 2018, 06:37

So I'm watching Wargames, as one does, and what do I see?

This is the only shot, but I feel a rather confident. The TeleVideo isn't as cool as Lightman's IMSAI, and there are a ton of Memorexes at NORAD. Still, now I just can't part with it.

seebart · 27 Apr 2018, 07:09

You remind me of a previous member that used to post movie related posts...

Engicoder · 27 Apr 2018, 15:08

oops, wrong thread