brown Alps 1984 TI keyboard

[jacobolus]

This has to be one of the first Alps SKCM (“complicated Alps”) keyboards. I don’t think it’s in the Deskthority wiki?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/281482299509






Also, this 1983 luggable seems to have a similar keyboard:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/400333532878

[jacobolus]

Interestingly, this other “low profile” TI keyboard is some different type of switch (judging from the caps lock LED hole location) but otherwise looks very similar:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/141246202142?orig_cvip=true

[dorkvader]

It also seems to have pioneered the often-overlooked "vertical ditch" homing bars for F&J.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

MouseFan lists brown Alps (implying tactile¹) as 1984–1986, so that keyboard comes at the beginning of the brown Alps production run. Unfortunately what we don't have is a table of data (keyboard/switch/year/reference) from which to assess switch history. There's the beginnings of one on the wiki, but no-one's contributing to it:

http://deskthority.net/wiki/Keyboards_and_switches_by_year

It won't be much use unless people start adding to it. (Same as the one just for Hi-Tek switches: http://deskthority.net/wiki/NMB_Hi-Tek_variants)

In this case, the source information is eBay (not viable as a reference as the page and pictures don't stay around), and looking at the auction price, no-one here's going to buy it!


¹ Sandy has some uncertainty about brown linear, and whether they were ever a production switch; hard to say, as some variants (e.g. green tactile) really are extremely rare

[CPTBadAss]

Damn, that's a cool find. Wish the price wasnt so high though. Would love to pick one up to document and try out. Brown Alps were one of the most interesting things I tried at keycon west.

[nubbinator]

Damn, that's a cool find. Wish the price want so high though. Would love to pick one up to document and try out. Brown Alps were one of the most interesting things I tried at keycon west.

Yeah, I posted it in great finds when I found it because I thought it was pretty cool.  The price killed it though.  I managed to get them down to $125+shipping from their $150+shipping price and I've been trying to talk them down even lower or to just get the super busted up on that would require a ton of work on the switches to get them useable.

I'd love to put them side by side with my tactile greens and compare them.

[dorkvader]

In this case, the source information is eBay (not viable as a reference as the page and pictures don't stay around), and looking at the auction price, no-one here's going to buy it!

If you hover over the images, you can see that jacobolus rehosted them on imgur. Probably for the same reason you bring up here.

[jacobolus]

Yeah, I posted it in great finds when I found it because I thought it was pretty cool.

Oh, I missed that somehow. Anyway, I posted here in the keyboards forum because I wanted to make sure Daniel Beardsmore saw it, and because I think they’re of interest for general discussion more than necessarily a great deal for someone to pick up. :-)

[Daniel Beardsmore]

If you hover over the images, you can see that jacobolus rehosted them on imgur. Probably for the same reason you bring up here.

I grant you, Imgur seems reliable.

As far as I'm concerned, if the community has decided that the wiki is not worth the effort it takes to work on it, then so be it, I shall leave it to die. I've done far more than my fair share and it's long past time for other people to get involved. I'm certainly not running around doing everyone else's work for them.

[jacobolus]

As far as I'm concerned, if the community has decided that the wiki is not worth the effort it takes to work on it, then so be it, I shall leave it to die.

The problem with the wiki is that I don’t understand which images you find acceptable vs. not acceptable from a rights perspective (IMO all these illustrative images are fine as fair use, but you seem to want explicit permission on all of them), and I don’t know what info to add to image pages (Wikipedia has a bunch of templates/wizards that make adding new images much easier).

If I have to download the images, message the ebay seller asking for permission, re-upload to the wiki, add a bunch of text on 2-3 wiki pages, figure out how to categorize the pages/images, etc., then that’s suddenly a high bar that I don’t always have enough mental energy to clear, and a turnaround time of hours or days.

Rehosting images on imgur and making a geekhack thread by contrast takes about 1-2 minutes, and very little thought.

I absolutely think the wiki is valuable. I’m just lazy.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Who do you imagine is going to do all that work? I imagine you assume the wiki just "magically" assembled itself, right? Or maybe the gnomes did it.

[jacobolus]

I’m not imagining that anyone is going to do it, unless they feel like it.

The current wiki is amazing and wonderful and I deeply appreciate it. I just don’t always have the mental energy and time to add every ebay keyboard I see.

I’m not trying to excuse my laziness, just explaining how it is.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Why would anyone be expected to add everything? That was my whole point.

[jacobolus]

Someone finally bought these for $100 + shipping for the pair. Anyone here?