This board.... This fucking board... let me tell you about this board, dudes and dudettes...
Today I will be telling the tale of my Texas Instruments adventure - full of excitement and wonder! But also confusion and uneasiness. Be amazed and bewildered as I take you through the events that began to unfold almost exactly one year ago...
PART I - THE NEONE MEME
I remember seeing a board pop up on on my eBay phone app while I was changing my (at the time) 9 month old daughter. The board was described as a "Texas Instruments Low Profile" keyboard. Having just learned about a few different models that could come with SKCM brown, I jumped at this one!
After waiting the usual week and a half to receive it I opened it up and was delighted: definitely SKCM browns. This was my third SKCM brown at the time, so I knew what I was feeling was certainly SKCM brown. This particular keybaord had a key that was slightly off it's slider axis, so I pulled it up and then saw this:
At this point I lost my shit. The only time I had even heard of SKCM green switches were from @e3eves' post on GH about his awesome docutech find. I remember being super excited and run around my house screaming "NOOOOOOO WAAAAAAYYYYYYYY". I took several pictures of the board's innards as well.
The model sticker on the back of the board was pretty destroyed as well, but you could make out some of it:
The board's exterior was pretty rusted and messed up so I ended up putting the switches in a xerox 6085 (that I bought from cindy! thanks again!) that originally had SKCM brown alps in it. The switches were of the pine variety - it was a very cool find. Here's a fun image I found of when I discovered it:
Thanks for the memories, dudes, hahaha.
PART II - THE WTF SKCL CREAM FIND
Fast forward to last week - so about a year later. A dude with not a lot of post history named @double a posts this: https://imgur.com/a/oP0c31N
Basically a NOS Ti board! I messaged him immediately asking if I could buy it (save your judgment for some other time, haha). "this will be a fantastic addition to my collection of alps board," I thought. "Basically NOS SKCM browns!"
...it arrived in the mail today, but I was just headed out the door when the UPS guy came to drop it off. After he handed me the box I thought "I have a little bit of time before I actually have to go," so I opened it up and typed on it.
Utter disappointment...
...is what I felt initially. I was expecting something tactile, but instead, it was linear. It was crazy smooth too and felt nothing like any alps switch I knew. I thought about just leaving my house then, but I thought to myself "I'll just confirm what switch it is and then go." I set the board down on my kitchen bar and went to my office to grab my keycap puller... Except I couldn't find my keycap puller. I was starting to get really upset about not being able to find my keycap puller since I just remembered seeing it not 3 minutes ago! I was starting to throw shit around in my room and started talking to myself like "dammit, chris!! This is why you need to fucking organize your - " and then I found it underneath a pillow.
I frantically ran back to the keyboard in the kitchen and popped off a keycap and was very surprised: SKCL alps. It looked yellow at first but I though "no way, this board has to be older than that!" Upon closer inspection it was definitely SKCL cream, and with that knowledge I left for work.
I thought about how strange it was that it had SKCL cream switches in it - epsecially since it didn't feel like alps for two major reasons:
1) it was WAY smoother than any alps switch I had ever tried, and
2) the bottoming out sounded much different than the normal SKCL alps soundtrack.
Very strange stuff, but I was at work and couldn't inspect the board more.
When I finally got home I posted some pics in the telegram chat as well as a couple of videos:
You'll have to excuse my perhaps over the top enthusiasm - I was just so amazed by them, hahaha. It was so strange! It even had black switchplates as well. I couldn't figure out why this board, which had only ever been documented with tactile switches - and really only SKCM brown since my first Ti board had never been seen before either.
Incidentally, in the video I mentioned how it sounded like dampened creams without the dampeners (I also failed to mention that I linearized them also) - but here is a sound comparison between the two, since, as luck would have it, I still have the video of how the linearized undapamened dampened creams sound:
First the TI board:
Now the linearized undampened dampened creams:
They sound, at least in person, extremely similar!
So anyway I was trying to figure out what was causing such a different bottoming out sound compared to my data general that also had SKCL creams in it when @matt567 wrote me a message that said "those are not SKCL creams."
I was like "uh....yeah...yeah they are, dude"
"no they aren't - look at the slider."
Then after examining the slider is when I realized what was causing the different sound - the sliders aren't "normal" alps sliders. I took some pictures to help show that:
Do you see how it's different? It took me a while to see it as well - I don't have as young of eyes as matt, apparently.
It's the slider shape. One of the sides has a more drastic cutout than normal SKCL switches - it's not reflectionally symmetrical! Here are two SKCL switches side-by-side - the left switch is the SKCL "cream" switch and the right is a normal SKCL cream:
Very strange indeed! It seems the SKCL "cream" is made of a lesser total volume of plastic, which could be why it sounds similar to linearized dampened creams with the dampeners taken out: because those also have less total volume of plastic! In short, I think it's because it's a more "hallowed out" alps slider.
Apparently it's the same kind of slider that is used in alps "double action switches" - they too have the same kind of non-symmetrical slider. Here's a picture of the slider from a double action switch, courtesy of matt:
Though, there does seem to be a difference even with that switch. One side seems to have an additional cutout on the side face of the switch, whereas the switches on my board are just flat on both sides.
At this point the telegram chat and I were really curious about any kind of date codes, so I opened up the board and took some pics!
First I obviously checked the very detailed back label:
Oh....right...
Next I checked the inside ICs:
In the last pic we speculated that it was from 82 because of the 82 number on the NEC chip.
Next I got a look at the back of the PCB:
And it's that last picture that made me really start to wonder... is this some kind of prototype board? I don't even know how to interpret " For technical investigation of a customer." How do you technically investigate a customer? What does that even mean? Also the big red "SAMPLE" is intriguing as well. I suspect underneath that sticker is the normal branding of the board - but I don't want to remove it.
Finally, a look at the back case:
which yields not much additional information.
PART III - WHAT A RIDE....
I find it hilarious that both times I buy a Ti board like this, I don't get at all what I was expecting. The first board turned out to be neon greens when I was excpecting SKCM brown, and the second board turned out to be some weird variant of SKCL creams when I was expecting it to be SKCM brown/green - LINEAR alps was not even a thought in my mind when I bought the board from double a.
So my question to you guys is this: what is this thing? What are these switches? The alps vortex continues to be more and more of a mystery to me - it seems the more we know, the less it makes sense. Needless to say I'm going to basically buy every Ti board I come across from now on =P My only hope is that if one of you beats me to it that you comment in this thread about what kind of switches it has!
Thanks for reading this crazy long story of mine, but it was too wild to not write about!
Until next time!
またね。
//gains.
