Canon AP400

[HaaTa]

This was a more random of a find than usual, but turned out to be more interesting than I expected



I've seen similar keycaps before, and similar layouts. But the switches were oddly clicky. Not loud, but not worn out either.
I pulled some keycaps...



But what the hell are those?! These are Alps keycaps.



And I'm sure I've seen an LED like this before (someone find it for me...pretty please ).



But the truly crazy part was this switch.




The spring looks similar to the T Alps lock switches, but with a key difference. The spring doesn't rest against the top of the switch housing... Is it broken?

Nope. It's yet another double click mechanism!







And thus, henceforth this switch shalt be knowneth as the Alps Double Click switch.

Like the Teletype switch, this one was designed to house a double clicker from the start. But as the actuation mechanism isn't as unique, describing the function (as it is rare) seems more fitting. In addition, this switch seems to be closer to the Alps Plate Spring switch than the T and CM Alps switches.

And as usual, more pics available here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/triplehaat ... 773948545/

[Muirium]

Whoah, there's a lot of inventiveness in this one. My favourites being the ziggurat style double click sliders and the little LED on springs! But even the font is eye catching: note the N in MARGIN, and now I want a pentagram key too…

Do these double click switches have more than two contacts and logical states? I'm still intrigued by the idea of a musical computer keyboard, which requires two actuation points to determine velocity (there's a lot of difference in tickling a piano's keys vs. pounding them).

[HaaTa]

So it turns out I didn't show the proof of the alps....oops



So, yes, notice in this pic how there are 4 pins in this switch (the one to the right is the one with the LED).



This is what the inside looks like without the slider and springs.



And this is how the first click works.

[HaaTa]

Whoah, there's a lot of inventiveness in this one. My favourites being the ziggurat style double click sliders and the little LED on springs! But even the font is eye catching: note the N in MARGIN, and now I want a pentagram key too…

Do these double click switches have more than two contacts and logical states? I'm still intrigued by the idea of a musical computer keyboard, which requires two actuation points to determine velocity (there's a lot of difference in tickling a piano's keys vs. pounding them).

I have more keyboards (typewriter inserts) with this sort of font and keycaps, but are a more modern Alps variant.


As for piano keys, usually this is done using Hall Effect (at least I think so) so you can calculate the acceleration of key press and at which point you can figure out the force that the hammer would have been striking the piano wire.

[Muirium]

Ooh, cool! Makes sense it would be something good, sensitive and linear. As far as I know they just sample at two points, but a fully tracked system comes to mind!

[Peter]

Ooh, cool! Makes sense it would be something good, sensitive and linear. As far as I know they just sample at two points, but a fully tracked system comes to mind!

Reminded me of this :

prodikeys_dm.jpg (186.31 KiB) Viewed 11976 times

Knowing Creative, the keyboard is probably just rubber-dome mush ..
Maybe even both of them

Nice typewriter btw ..

[Muirium]

Knowing Creative, the keyboard is probably just rubber-dome mush ..
Maybe even both of them

It really is! I saw one at a radio club junk sale and gave it a poke: not good. Most Creative! Absurdly, it was literally the only keyboard on sale there.

Mr. Beardsmore went to one of the same a few months before and scored this:
http://deskthority.net/photos-videos-f8 ... t5967.html

As for musical boards, rather than Creative, I'm thinking of Roland. Here's a rather nicely weighted one:
http://www.keyboardmag.com/article/rola ... iew/152652

Costs all of £700. Yet I can walk into a showroom in Edinburgh and play with one, while Filcos, Realforces and even bloody Keycools are nowhere within reach! Two very different keyboard industries.

[mr_a500]

As for musical boards, rather than Creative, I'm thinking of Roland. Here's a rather nicely weighted one:
http://www.keyboardmag.com/article/rola ... iew/152652

Costs all of £700. Yet I can walk into a showroom in Edinburgh and play with one, while Filcos, Realforces and even bloody Keycools are nowhere within reach! Two very different keyboard industries.

I need something like that. If you get one, do a full review - including disassembling the entire thing for photos.

[Muirium]

There's a sneaky idea. Perhaps HaTaa won't get there first! Although looking at my keyboard fund (for either variety) it'll be a while.

[HaaTa]

Oooo, yeah I'd be really interested in piano keyboard disassembly pics! (Buying a grand piano for myself soon as I like to play real pianos more ).

[Daniel Beardsmore]

For comparison, here's the vintage tee mount ("T"):

LED on a spring: http://www7.ocn.ne.jp/~hisao/image/x.htm
Ziggurat slider and angled side tabs: http://www7.ocn.ne.jp/~hisao/image/paso700.htm

Alps seem to have tried every combination of everything they could think of, almost like they only sold a couple of batches of any design before throwing it out and returning to the drawing board in an attempt to outdo their previous crazy outlandishness. I can't think of any other company with so many switch designs, many of which appearing to have no advantage over several similar models besides the fun of having to retool the keyboard assembly line.

In this case, they decided to mount the plate spring assembly on its side!

It would be interesting if we had a technical illustrator in the community … imagine 3D diagrams of all these switches and how they work. I find it really hard to get my head around switch photos, even my own photo shoots where I take enormous care to show how all the parts fit together. Should dispatch one to the kiibohd parties.

[HaaTa]

Yeah, I would love to meetup with a technical illustrator. Sadly I do not have the skills to do any such things...

[nourathar]

[Muirium]

Typing keyboards did indeed evolve from piano keyboards. Two rows of keys was an obvious early design. You can see that's a typewriter and not a musical instrument from more than just the legends: the black "notes" have no breaks. In music, some notes don't exist in sharp. (Thanks to dodgy definitions, via the Greeks.)

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Posted, with patent references: [wiki]Alps vertical plate spring[/wiki] (this switch keeps turning up in my patent searches but I forgot that it had been confirmed for real; I found another patent that is a variant of the Acer switch that may or may not have been put into production, with the leaf spring attached to the slider).

Plus there's a very similar switch (not proved to be Alps, but almost certainly is Alps) that combines the side placement design with the Alps integrated dome concept to form a side dome switch:

http://deskthority.net/keyboards-f2/alp ... t7892.html

It's almost as though the Meddling Monk is rewriting history to include even weirder switches at whatever rate we can discover and catalogue all the ones he previously concocted up.

[jacobolus]

A slightly later model, the AP500-II, from ~1985, used the horizontal type of Alps plate spring switches.

I was expecting SKCM "ivory" switches, as that’s what the ~1986–1987 versions of these typewriters had, but this version turns out to have plate-mounted Alps plate spring switches throughout the main section, with double-acting plate spring switches on the spacebar, return, and back space keys, and a mix of SKCL green and double-acting SKCL switches on the lock key and on the side function keys.

That explains why the later typewriters used a mix of SKCM and double-acting plate spring switches. I assume the switch from plate spring to SKCM was for cost cutting, but maybe someone at Canon or Alps just preferred them.

Keycaps are spherical, mostly doubleshot, with pad printed legends on all the window keys (except the lock key). They were originally white on gray, but now are yellow on brown.

Anyhow, pictures:










Bonus keycap profile pic (for more of these, see https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=68550):


Unfortunately during shipping, some of the internal typewriter mechanism parts broke. I’m hoping to someday make some custom Alps plate spring keyboards though, so maybe the keyboard bits at least can eventually find a good home.

[terrycherry]

What the awesome new switches found your guys.
for jacobolus keyboard

(Clicky)Alps plate spring Type1
-various key

(Linear DA)Alps SKCL Double Action
-RETURN; space bar; BACK SPACE;

(Linear)Alps SKCL Green with LED
-DEC TAB;
(empty LED): MARGIN RELEASE;

(Tactile)Alps SKCM Cream
-BACK TRACE;

And please show me the off-caps switches on board. Something to confirm for the keys.

[jacobolus]

The back trace, etc. keys are double-acting linear switches, not tactile. There are no SKCM switches on this typewriter.

The return, space bar, and back space keys are double-acting Alps plate spring switches, not linear.

[terrycherry]

The back trace, etc. keys are double-acting linear switches, not tactile. There are no SKCM switches on this typewriter.

The return, space bar, and back space keys are double-acting Alps plate spring switches, not linear.

That's true. Thanks to correct me.
Finally, I got the unknown keyboard with Alps vertical plate spring8-)