deskthority

Ended up finding this old mechanical ABB keyboard from the 80's and it was really dirty from sitting abandoned for more than 20 years in a factory.

The layout is really strange(alphabetical order) plus all the extra keys for that process system.

The switches are some I have never seen before and they are linear leaf spring contact and coiled spring actuation.

so far i have cleaned the case with soapy water and will blow all the dust off with compressed air from the boards inside. I am puzzled why it would need 220V power but i guess it would be because the mainframe would be far from the operator room.

the first key I cleaned is the arrow down key and you can really see how dirty it is.

Interesting piece of kit. Can’t seem to find anything about them besides uninformative industrial product pages and some place selling them for a couple of grand in India!

The sight of mains voltage going straight into a keyboard gives me the heebie-jeebies!

Arto wrote: 22 Oct 2022, 00:42 The switches are some I have never seen before and they are linear leaf spring contact and coiled spring actuation.

I know those The first vintage board i´ve ever found had the same switches :
wiki/Ericsson_RMD_973_series

Mine came in an Ericsson produced Telekom board.
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=27086

Looks like one large switch grid. Would make one hell of an ortho-linear keyboard.

ABB made/makes industrial equipment, such as robots. The PCB is marked ASEA ("A"): which merged with "BB" in Aug 1987 to form ABB. So the design must be pre-merger but it was sold after.
Both ASEA and Ericsson Data were Swedish, so it does not surprise me that it is made from Swedish components.

The keyboard is now cleaned and fully assembled. The switch is an Ericsson RMD973 linear switch, scratchiness varies from switch to switch and might be due to wear. now it is time to put the board in storage or sell it.

Arto wrote: 05 Nov 2022, 00:10 The switch is an Ericsson RMD973 linear switch, scratchiness varies from switch to switch and might be due to wear.

I found a lot of the switches in my ericsson board pretty scratchy. Didnt really like the typing feeling , but the board was super solid.
Sold mine to a collector in the US