An interesting Alps Keyboard I found

daedalus · 02 Jul 2012, 14:53

This was being thrown out by my old college. I will need to dig out a proper camera, and my keycap puller, but here's the obligatory crap cameraphone shot -

Relevant points -

Clicky Alps switches. They appear to be some sort of clone (the switches had cream/white sliders, and no Alps logo on the housing) I was thinking XMs, but they are pretty pleasant to type on (smooth, relatively light, noisy as hell). Maybe some sort of Fuhua switch?
The lock keys (Caps/Num/Scroll) have an LED on the lower part of the switch, and are linear. I haven't popped one of the caps to see what colour the slider is.
Glidepoint touchpad, pretty decent tracking on a high resolution monitor.
Short PS/2 Y-cable
Pad printed, Dolch-esque keycaps. The F9 key does not appear to be original.
Probably from some sort of rack-mounted terminal. the part at the top with the cable holder slides out, and can rotate. There are buttons at the side for some sort of latch mechanism.
It has a US ISO layout. Nope, I didn't make a mistake there... go look at the picture.

There's no indication of who made it. I may dismantle it at some point to find some hints.

7bit · 02 Jul 2012, 14:55

That's great! Just get yourself a better camera ...

rodtang · 02 Jul 2012, 16:18

It is from a luggageable PC running NT or something, there was a complete one on ebay for a long time, I look at it for a long time and ended up thinking it was a RD, turns out I was wrong.

daedalus · 02 Jul 2012, 16:21

I wasn't sure if it was luggable, or from a rackmount system. The thing at the back seemed like one of those fold up screens that you see in some server rooms.

Do you remember the manufacturer in question?

7bit · 02 Jul 2012, 16:49

I've got a rackmount keybaord with a similar layout, but conventional key cap colors and without sleep, wake and power buttons.

rodtang · 02 Jul 2012, 17:17

I don't think I was able to find out who manufactured it, opening it up should give you more info than what I have.

Ascaii · 02 Jul 2012, 19:47

I have a keyboard like this...white alps and green alps on the led keys.

DaXxJaPxX · 03 Jul 2012, 15:26

Ascaii wrote:I have a keyboard like this...white alps and green alps on the led keys.

prolly not the same as OP said the LED keys were linear. you should post a pic anyway though

Ascaii · 03 Jul 2012, 21:00

DaXxJaPxX wrote:
Ascaii wrote:I have a keyboard like this...white alps and green alps on the led keys.
prolly not the same as OP said the LED keys were linear. you should post a pic anyway though

green ALPS are linear switches.

My unit has a slightly different layout, but the same trackpad...I will bet the switches are identical to mine as well.
My unit is complete...including the 8 port KVM switch, monitor, and 19" rackmount.