ALPS Cream Heavy - on a DEC terminal keyboard

lilwebsite · 07 Jul 2020, 02:40

Hi everyone, I am going to go more in depth on this keyboard later since I will be cleaning it up and converting it, but for now I wanted to share an interesting find. I noticed one of the keys are heavier than the others, after checking the DT wiki it appears to be an alps cream heavy. According the wiki, only 3 other keyboards are known to have this switch, does anyone else have keyboard for DEC terminal keyboard that has a cream heavy for the compose character key? Another thing that needs to be mentioned is that this keyboard was designed by alps, their logo is all over the keyboard itself so maybe the sharp keyboards mentioned in the wiki are designed by alps too? On top of that, the wiki says this switch bottoms out at 120g of force using the coin method, but using the same method I get 125g force. I did not measure the amount of force it takes to reach the actuation point. Other things I noticed with the coin method is that at 120g it doesn't bottom out, but when I push them down it does not rise again. But if I add the 5g it bottoms out properly. Maybe just a little bit dirty of a switch, causing more friction? I will know for sure when I clean the board. Pictures below. Here's the wiki article as well

Spoiler:

Sturmtiger001 · 07 Jul 2020, 02:47

Wow, that is one HEAVY switch.