Dating T1 switches

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I'm interested in getting a rough estimate of the year that [wiki]alps.tw Type T1[/wiki] switches were introduced.

alps.tw suggests 1986–1990, but I don't believe this.

My feeling is that Himake went from OA2 ("Simplified Alps Type II") to OA4, and then to T1. OA4 seems to be one of a number of rare variants, like my LABI01 and that Polish dude's linear Nan Tan. Most Alps clones seem to be OA2 or T1.

The information that we have about the Focus FK-2001 supports this: OA2 up to 1995, and then T1 afterwards (corresponding to when the Windows key was added).

Keyboards I'm most interested in are:

a) Monterey K110/SIIG MiniTouch/SunTouch Jr
b) Ortek MKB-84/MCK-84/other SunTouch Jr

The reason is that these both clearly crossed the 1995 boundary very widely: the K110 was made from around 1991 to 2001 and the Ortek series was also made within a similar date range. Very little is understood about the switches in either of these, although no-one has knowingly found any Alps clone but T1 in a K110/MiniTouch/SunTouch Jr.

However, I'll accept the switch type and date for any and every Alps clone keyboard. It's time we started getting proper dating evidence for the switch variants. Let's make 2015 the year that we figure this all out.

Just a photo each of the switch innards and the controller chip along with the make/model in this topic is sufficient.

[002]

I have provided the image of the controller for my MiniTouch but not sure if I ever got photos of the switch internals. Would that help at all? It would be pretty easy as I actually have them all desoldered as I replaced all the switches with Matias tactile.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

These are your switches:


http://deskthority.net/group-buys-f33/t ... ml#p100291

Assuming those have the narrow copper click leaves, they're T1 (if not, you have something weird). The controller photo … ah, it's in a PM, which I can't cite in a reference :) Re-posting it here:

002 SIIG MiniTouch controller IC.jpg (162.95 KiB) Viewed 2034 times

2000 — very late issue!

Added to [wiki]Keyboards and switches by year[/wiki] as I have no reason to believe those are anything other than AK-CN2.

[002]

Ok here's a pic of the internal components of two of my MiniTouch switches. I chose one with a two-digit number (11) on the housing and another with four-digit (2F82). They seem to be the same to me. Is this the narrow click leaf?

MiniTouch Switches.jpg (341.49 KiB) Viewed 1968 times

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Yep, that's the narrow leaf. The wide leaves looks virtually the same as the ones from Alps switches. I'm getting close to completing a clone recognition chart: [wiki]Four-tab clone[/wiki].

Basically what I aim to confirm is when the type you have, was introduced, and when the previous type (OA2) was phased out.