deskthority

I was on Mechmarket looking through the good deals I missed out on in the last year, and there was a post for a vintage Nissho Electronics Hi-Pro Topre keyboard, they were asking $180 and they said the board didn't come with the space bar or the conical spring for the spacebar. The post continued:

"You most likely won't need it since you're getting this to swap keycaps".

It just makes me sad. Not only is this a proud and hard-to-find board, there is a presumption of the dreaded pastime: harvesting. Even the word makes me curl up and cringe like a dry flaky pair of pursed lips. Maybe they will keep the board boxed up ready to accept the caps back. Then again maybe they will throw out the board, or in any case, separate the caps from the board on a more permanent basis. Simply when two things are no longer together, the probability that they will be combined together again seems to reduce with time.

This is quite an important time in the life cycle of rarer boards: they are becoming more expensive to collect and harder to find outside the normal channels. I can only dread to think what, in 50 years' time, people will say when they look back at people chopping up boards and flinging bits of them half way around the world.

I'm just thrilled that somebody else around here knows about the IUCN Red List.

Nixdorf boards are probably on the list. I think there are very few people who restore them, though there are a few. Ditto on the odd assortment of Hirose Orange-carrying boards out there. Their switches are just too rare. The Hirose boards are also for such niche hardware iirc, takes a special type of collector to restore a board they can never use.

On the other hand, Microswitch hall effect boards are basically only good for restoration and not use, and their switches nor caps can be easily transplanted. That's rather fortunate as they're some of the most beautiful keyboards ever produced.

I think responsible sellers, who care about keeping the environment around our hobby sustainable and healthy, should always ask: I'm interested in what uses people have for their boards. What's your intention with this one? And if you're not happy with the answer, don't part with it.

Thought about this topic: harvesting

You raised two major concerns: environmental and sustainability (keyboard-hobby-wish)

The harvesters
Harvesting is glorified and done more shamelessly in GH than in DT. Harvesters do have some legitimate reasons to support their action - if they save some of the components of an abandoned keyboard (e.g. keycaps or switches), they are already doing a much better job than the average e-waste recycler who will probably just harvest for the scrap metal parts. For connector older and less well-known than PS/2 or AT, they'll also claim that there is no way to adapt the keyboard for modern computer use and it takes a trained engineer to convert the keyboard and is not cost effective and probably no one will bother to do that conversion.

The dedicated collectors
In DT, there is a relatively organized Wiki and a few volunteers working on it, with collective effort of the community, the last moment of some rare keyboards (in case they are going to be harvested) can be frozen digitally for an eternal "public viewing".
There are individual collectors who not only work on and investigate into various aspects of their collections but also organize and share their knowledge with the public, to name a few:
MouseFan's website: http://mousefan.telcontar.net/
utensilia's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/utensilia
Chyros's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Chyrosran22
Ralf Möller's website about Lisp Machine: http://www.ifis.uni-luebeck.de/~moeller ... olics.html
Kim Kwon-tae who found his own computer museum in Seoul Korea: http://computermuseum.or.kr/ (just for the shipment of one collectable supercomputer, Cray J90, he spent over 8,000 USD, and his museum has over 400 older computer systems)
Of course there are many more dedicated collectors apart from the above.

The story of a responsible seller
It is quite true that Microswitch hall effect boards survive because they "... are basically only good for restoration and not use, and their switches nor caps can be easily transplanted ..."
When 7bit run the long-running Group-Buy of SA profile keycap sets with Space-cadet keyboard theme, many members will be drooling for the original high profile caps of these keyboards, but not for the Lisp Machine itself nor the special capability of the Lisp Machine keyboard. Here is a story of how a person got hold of a few Lisp Machines with their keyboards:

...an older eccentric millionaire type had lots of this equipment rotting in his basement from years past. it needed to go, and he didn’t care much about scoring big for it. the people paying the market price for all this stuff would certainly mistreat it as they’d just flip them to profit. he wanted to see them go into loving hands who would restore them and treat them properly...

http://kremlin.enterprises/post/1293226 ... e-etclocal

Sustainability and environmental friendliness
It is interesting to talk about "IUCN Red List" of keyboard models, e.g. then it is acceptable to harvest the Alps keycaps from a new logo Dell AT101? Until they are going to join the "IUCN Red List" some day?

My ideal environmental friendly allocation of keyboard (or computing device) is a bit communist-like in science fiction where people are living in the future world or similar to the military: each individual will be allocated a computer or a keyboard only when he has the use for it, there is no collection possible. Computing systems and keyboards are modular and individual parts (switches or membrane) can be replaced in case of failure or can be upgraded. Only then, there will be as little waste as possible from these electronics we are now allowed to lust for in this consumerist society.

One good thing is that short-run production is starting to address the cannibalization problem. Remember: most of the cannibals out there are trying to dress up fairly modern standard boards.

You brought up the Space Cadet design: two years ago, if you wanted that look, you had to cut up a vintage board, and likely you'd still have all sorts of mismatches that you couldn't cover without cobbling together bits of several boards. Now, you can grab an new SP set from a group buy, and it will fit with no compromises.

Good ol' Edgar Matias is trying to get us new PBT ALPS-alike caps, which reduces pressure on AT101s, AEKs, 5140s, and SGI Granites.

I will admit to being a bit of a harvester-- the box of miscellaeous ALPS-mount caps under my bed can't be denied-- but none of them are from particularly coveted boards, and ALPS is a couple generations behind in terms of aftermarket support.

Ima do it: