deskthority

Hello
I picked up a DIY keyboard from the late 70's from a guy who built it for his DIY Apple II Computer. I posted it on Reddit a bit ago, and found out that they are Honeywell Hall Effect switches, spherical double-shot caps, and someone mentioned you guys are the ones to ask about it. I cleaned it up and took some pictures, you can view them here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3s9vzqujqnwk ... Yae4a?dl=0

If anyone has any further useful information please let me know. I would also like to sell it sometime, so if anyone has any idea how much it might be worth that would be great. I will probably post it either here or /r/mechmarket.

Thanks for any help!

Great find. This looks very heavy. Is the case made entirely of steel? Do you know how heavy exactly it is?

It looks to be some sort of Cortron ITW magnetic valve keyboard. The prototype label is pretty cool. The switches had already been around a while (Licon, the predecessor to Cortron also used ITW magnetic valve switches).

wiki/ITW_magnetic_valve

I have quite a few keyboards with these switches in my collection.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/triplehaa ... 4784659215
https://www.flickr.com/photos/triplehaa ... 9942882484

I'd like to take a closer look but it looks like Dropbox is giving Error 500s at the moment. Without looking closely I'll agree with HaaTa for now.

Yep, definitely magnetic valve as HaaTa noted. Even more amazing is that this is hand wired. Wow.

@WASD_Greg I *think* it is aluminum, I am estimating only about 5 pounds, not nearly as heavy as it looks. The Apple II computers I bought it with were in diy steel enclosures, and oh man, they were heavy.

@HaaTa Great information, thank you so much, I haven't heard of these switches before. Your keyboards are really nice!

@XMIT Yeah the diy skills are really amazing, the wiring would have been intense.

Something I really like about this board is that all of the switches on the right were never wired up, so the switches have never even been used. I think this could be a really cool project for someone with the time, unfortunately that isn't me at the moment. I would like to find the right person and the right price to give this board a new life, I just know so little about this stuff and I have more projects and life commitments than I know what to do with as it is.

Thank you all for your feedback, I really appreciate it!

FlipTheSwitch wrote: @WASD_Greg I *think* it is aluminum, I am estimating only about 5 pounds, not nearly as heavy as it looks. The Apple II computers I bought it with were in diy steel enclosures, and oh man, they were heavy.

Being a vintage computer guy, I just love the homemade hobby construction of stuff like this. I would guess the aluminum was hand cut to match the keyboard key switches. I have a few things that were hand made or re-purposed to act as a computer enclosure.

If you are ever interested in selling one of the Apple IIs in the DIY steel enclosures, PM me. That stuff is just awesome. My favourite hand-made item (and fitting for this forum) is this: keyboards-f2/vintage-home-made-keyboard-t11844.html It's not hand wired but it is a terminal with keyboard.

Yeah, he said he hand cut and drilled everything, really some cool stuff from a diy perspective. Unfortunately I took the computers apart and sadly had to ditch the enclosures during a move. They were extremely cumbersome, and essentially just boxes, not nice and curvy like the keyboard. I still have the 2 motherboards, both are fully loaded, one is an official Apple board, and a second is a full clone, pcb and everything. They need some cleanup, but I will sell those a some point. I essentially took in his lifelong diy electronics hobby stuff, and I use many things of his in my own projects every day.