deskthority

What exactly do I have here, if anyone knows? The mounts on the little pill-shaped keys are similar to Cherry MX, but probably not the same. The travel on the keys is less than 1 mm, with a definite click to it. I'm presuming this came from a broken cash register or other point of sale terminal, but other than that I don't know much about it. The matrix seems quite simple, though it is not quite wired as a straight grid.

What is this useful for? Hooking it to a Teensy seems like one obvious option.

Is it worth much? I'd rather go a more conventional route for macro keys and the like, but if this isn't a high value item I might just try slapping a controller on it.




Sorry about having to use a ruler for scale. Yes, I have no bananas.

Hard to see it being worth much. (Made in Malaysia is not a good sign. Nothing against Malaysia, but that spells late in the mechanical era, with cost cutting aplenty.) Could be fun as a control panel of some sort though.

What's the feel like compared to other switches? Especially modern chiclet laptops? And how thin are these guys?

They seem like run of the mill PCB mount tactile switches, metal dome. Not much value there IMHO.

Muirium wrote: What's the feel like compared to other switches? Especially modern chiclet laptops? And how thin are these guys?

They're very clicky (and snappy-sounding, not necessarily louder) compared to laptop keys. The stems don't seem to have any resistance to tilt, so pressing off-center is almost like pressing the D-pad on a game controller. It still clicks, though. The height of the entire switch including the button is 9 mm above the surface of the PCB.

I am pretty sure this was intended to be used underneath a covering membrane of some sort which would contain the legends for the keys. Thus, the clicks had to be loud and quite tactile to get through the intervening layer.

There appears to be a date of manufacture in the lower right corner of the back: 12/12/2000 (it doesn't matter what date format they use ). Thus, it's not ancient, and there could well still be registers in use with this exact part. That's why I thought it might be worth more for its original purpose than if it is altered.