deskthority

This is the Track House Standard IIe Tender Keypad for the Apple IIe. The ink has worn off, but the company name is embossed on the rubber insert in the upper-left and almost visible in the photo, as well as printed on the back label. I has some so-so double-shot keycaps and plate-mounted switches that I don't recognize. There are no active components inside; the AMP connector has a date code for 1984, which seems about right. It has unshifted parentheses, though I have to suppose they were for negative entries in accounting. I am not sure why a ? warranted space. It probably did something significant in the accompanying software.

It connected to a parallel port via a DB-25, which ends up being pretty wasteful. Some of the connector pins are left out. That AMP connector has 26 conductors; 5 of its pins aren't even soldered in; others are connected to the DB-25, but otherwise don't do anything. The 13 that are connected give a 8x5 matrix, so up to 40 switches. There are only 27 actual switches.

It's trivial to implement as a standard QMK matrix. Since we can pick the voltage, a Teensy LC will do. Normally, this wouldn't be worth much attention, even with a few interesting choices of key legends. But the PCB itself is pretty remarkable. Compare it with The Keyboard Company's more-or-less equivalent Numeric Keypad IIe from the wiki or its later rebranding which saved some copper.