NEC ACPP-H4124D

Soundsample: http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title=Island:6637


Front View


Back View

This is one of those 1 Euro boards that I sometimes pick up on eBay Germany. This was was just listed as "PC Keyboard for old PCs".
At the time of buying it I had no clue if it was mechanical or not, so I just went for the cat in the bag.
Sadly I have no idea when this board was built. There are no clues to be found anywhere. Based on the switches and the general look I'm assuming it was made sometime in the mid 80s.

As you can see the board is about the size of a Model M and also follows some of the Model M (or maybe Model F?) design schemes. The keycaps are much more round and the board is way less curvy in general though.

Let's take it apart and see what we have here.


Keyboard without top case. There was some really nasty unidentifiable substance around the Numpad area. When cleaning the board it came off in one bit - sadly it took some of the metal plate paint with it.


The most interesting part - the switches!
This keyboard uses light sky blue NEC switches - which even Sandy's page had no detailed info on!
Sandy however does have a lot of info on the three other variants on the switch .


These switches are clicky and tactile but in a very light way. The feeling is really hard to explain. They feel like a much lighter version of Cherry MX blue.. almost like Cherry Brown MX with a clicksound added.
Its not only the tactility that is lower.. the click sound is also much lower pitched and the board is much more quiet than any white ALPS or Cherry MX blue keyboard I have used so far.
Talking of tactility.. this is where it gets really weird. The odd thing with these switches is that the switches register the keystroke before the click sound comes in, unlike Cherry MX blue or white ALPS where you get the click sound pretty much exactly when the keystroke registers.
With these sky blue NEC switches it is possible to generate a key stroke without the click sound if you do not allow the switch to travel all the way down. This is really confusing when using the board for the first time.
However by now I have been typing on this thing for the whole evening and I really enjoy these switches!


The keycaps are double shot molded besides for the German Umlaut keys which seem to use dye impregnation.


I noticed this pretty late but it seems like there are three solder points for each switch. The switches however do only have two stems each. So I assume each switch has their own diode as well.


Chips - NEC too - no outsourcing on this board!

Conclusion

As already written above the feel and sound of this keyboard is VERY pleasant. If it was not so bulky I might give this board a chance to become my daily driver.

Created by sixty, 27 July 2009 at 19:29 Last edited by sixty, 27 July 2009 at 19:30 Last comment by patrickgeekhack on 02 August 2010 at 00:51 21 Comments, 2,620 Views