Aftermarket Apple II/II+ Keyboard / Unknown Cherry Keyboard?
Posted: 13 Sep 2022, 01:34
by JP!
This classy piece of furniture featuring a solid oak case and industrial themed textured two-tone paint job arrived in the mail today. As best as I can figure this is some sort of aftermarket Apple II/II+ extended external keyboard featuring Cherry solid state capacitive switches. Looking at the dates of the chips on this board I believe this would have been manufactured as early as 1982.
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Case Shots:
Spoiler:
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Oddities:
Spoiler:
F0 key. If you know, you know.
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Perhaps never seen on here before the illuminated variant of this switch.
"US patent 4445164, filed on the 5th of May 5 1982, describes the illuminated version of the switch"
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Strange to me that there is no Cherry part number here. Has anyone come across something like this before?
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PCB Shots:
Spoiler:
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The red and brown wires lead directly to a bulb or led for the Power indicator next to the spacebar.
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The Cable:
Spoiler:
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Re: Aftermarket Apple II/IIe Keyboard / Unknown Cherry Keyboard
Posted: 13 Sep 2022, 02:38
by digital_matthew
Press F0 to play F-Zero.
Re: Aftermarket Apple II/II+ Keyboard / Unknown Cherry Keyboard?
Posted: 14 Sep 2022, 23:26
by hellothere
I Googled "mbm2716" that's Fujitsu. "8152 857" just specifies more Fujitsu. "8034EV 350m chip" came up with "Top 100 movies with real sex scenes" so that's probably wrong. "AMI" is a BIOS creator, although I don't know if this is the same one. "026-0884" comes up with an autographed floppy disk from Steve Wozniak.
The II had the Power button similar to your keyboard. At least some Is did, too. Your keyboard also has an awful lot more switches than the I.
While I'm an Apple fan, I really don't know much about the I through III series. Mac and newer.
Re: Aftermarket Apple II/II+ Keyboard / Unknown Cherry Keyboard?
Posted: 15 Sep 2022, 00:16
by JP!
hellothere wrote: 14 Sep 2022, 23:26
I Googled "mbm2716" that's Fujitsu. "8152 857" just specifies more Fujitsu. "8034EV 350m chip" came up with "Top 100 movies with real sex scenes" so that's probably wrong. "AMI" is a BIOS creator, although I don't know if this is the same one. "026-0884" comes up with an autographed floppy disk from Steve Wozniak.
The II had the Power button similar to your keyboard. At least some Is did, too. Your keyboard also has an awful lot more switches than the I.
While I'm an Apple fan, I really don't know much about the I through III series. Mac and newer.
The 2716 is an EEPROM likely needed for additional external program memory while the AMI microcontroller is what I suspect to be from the AMI S2000 series family which were used in this time period for many types of consumer electronics including keyboards.
Has anyone come across something like this before?