Xerox DocuTech Keyboard!!!

[nateth]

I'm geeking out right now, but it hit me over the weekend that an old friend of mine that owns a small printing company had some dismantled Xerox DocuTech presses from the 90's he used for parts. I asked him if he still has any keyboards, and he said I can have them. I'll let you know what I find when I get them later today.

[UTEster750]

Oh damn that is so sweet! There is nothing like this in Australia..

[bocahgundul]

This is so fkin sweet how many Docutech you're going to get?

[Glenmael]

that's awesome

if you get more than one, you know err...hit me up

looking forward to pictures!

[UTEster750]

I'd definitely take one off your hands

[SBJ]

That's amazing!
What switches would those be using you think?

[UTEster750]

That's amazing!
What switches would those be using you think?

These godly ultra rare alps switches called Alps SKCM Green, only available in this board! 

[chyros]

Should be SKCM neon green or brown I guess, both excellent finds, congrats!

[UTEster750]

Should be SKCM neon green or brown I guess, both excellent finds, congrats!

Definitely an awesome find

[SBJ]

That's amazing!
What switches would those be using you think?

These godly ultra rare alps switches called Alps SKCM Green, only available in this board! 

HNNNNGG

[nateth]

Jackpot!!! He had three!!!!

[CPTBadAss]

Damn what a good find. Congrats on those Neon Greens

[UTEster750]

Jackpot!!! He had three!!!!

Show Image

Show Image

Damn dude you really hit the jackpot 

[chyros]

Wow, what a find, holy **** xD .

Are they pine or bamboo?

[alienman82]

removed.

[bocahgundul]

That is a crazy nice find gimme one please

[Screwdriver]

Cool....all this stuff that was considered trash, is now gold.

Gratz on the find.

[nateth]

Wow, what a find, holy **** xD .

Are they pine or bamboo?

I've only taken the caps off that one switch, but the one in the photo is pine.

[nateth]

Thanks everyone. I appreciate it!!!

[Mattr567]

Amazing find. One of the best ive seen! 

[nateth]

Yeah it's kinda terrifying really. Kinda. Lol

Looks like one is pine and the other two are bamboo.

[chyros]

Yeah it's kinda terrifying really. Kinda. Lol

Looks like one is pine and the other two are bamboo.

Cool, how are you liking them?

[nateth]

Cool, how are you liking them?

I'm loving them. I'm not a huge tactile guy, but the switches definitely have a very neat feel. Almost like what Topre would be like if it were truly mechanical.

I was sick yesterday, so I didn't have a chance to really mess with them, but I'll be giving the keycaps a bath today in preparation of the photos.

I've tried to do a bit of research on these boards. I know a bit about print-on-demand publishing given my prior work experience. If I'm not providing any new information here then please disregard my ranting.

The DocuTech 135 was a rather innovative piece of equipment that, as I understand it, was the first mainstream xerographic press to be mass marketed. The presses I took these boards off of (at least two of the three) were still operational as of 2013.

Interestingly enough they look nearly identical to the Xerox 6085 "Daybreak" workstation boards. These workstations in and of themselves are rare and were mainly used internally at Xerox despite having a lot of promise.

It would seem that PARC really developed some amazing things that never took off due to being stifled by Xerox "suits" or not appropriately priced.

I'd like to know about the history of these keyboards and switches to see if any more might exist. I did find a Daybreak keyboard on eBay. I'll be sure to take a picture of that when it comes in.

[CPTBadAss]

E3E and nubbinator have done some research on the machines. And of course I'm sure Haata and dorkvader can provide a lot of info.

[chyros]

Almost like what Topre would be like if it were truly mechanical.

Yes, that's pretty much exactly what I thought as well. In fact, everyone seems to think exactly that xD . Maybe they just have a really defined feel.

I really like them, but they're rather on the stiff side for me. Nonetheless an extremely interesting feel.

[nateth]

Almost like what Topre would be like if it were truly mechanical.

Yes, that's pretty much exactly what I thought as well. In fact, everyone seems to think exactly that xD . Maybe they just have a really defined feel.

I really like them, but they're rather on the stiff side for me. Nonetheless an extremely interesting feel.

Definitely on the stiff side. I think that was intentional. Press operators would want something they need to deliberately punch vs a delicate switch for typists that is too easy to actuate.

[chyros]

Almost like what Topre would be like if it were truly mechanical.

Yes, that's pretty much exactly what I thought as well. In fact, everyone seems to think exactly that xD . Maybe they just have a really defined feel.

I really like them, but they're rather on the stiff side for me. Nonetheless an extremely interesting feel.

Definitely on the stiff side. I think that was intentional. Press operators would want something they need to deliberately punch vs a delicate switch for typists that is too easy to actuate.

I got into contact with an Alps employee who confirmed they deliberately varied switch force to suit various customers' needs. These switches aren't stiff for no reason, indeed.

[emdude]

I got into contact with an Alps employee who confirmed they deliberately varied switch force to suit various customers' needs. These switches aren't stiff for no reason, indeed.

Damn, surely you also asked this employee what lubricant Alps used on their early SKCM switches?!

[alienman82]

removed.

[chyros]

I got into contact with an Alps employee who confirmed they deliberately varied switch force to suit various customers' needs. These switches aren't stiff for no reason, indeed.

Damn, surely you also asked this employee what lubricant Alps used on their early SKCM switches?!

Yes, I tried to get a lot of info out of him. He actually made keyboards in the UK for Alps. He seemed to have forgotten a fair bit though. He's retiring later this year, and once I have more time on my hands I'll see if I can contact him again .

[emdude]

Okay, that's really neat though.  Like alienman, I definitely would like to hear whatever insider info you can get your hands on.

[chyros]

Okay, that's really neat though.  Like alienman, I definitely would like to hear whatever insider info you can get your hands on.

Oh rest assured if I find anything useful I'm posting it all over .

[Mattr567]

I got into contact with an Alps employee who confirmed they deliberately varied switch force to suit various customers' needs. These switches aren't stiff for no reason, indeed.

Damn, surely you also asked this employee what lubricant Alps used on their early SKCM switches?!

Yes, I tried to get a lot of info out of him. He actually made keyboards in the UK for Alps. He seemed to have forgotten a fair bit though. He's retiring later this year, and once I have more time on my hands I'll see if I can contact him again .

Thats really cool! Wonder if Alps has any NOS switches laying around. Probably not the 1st gen switches like SKCM Blue since I imagine they just used up all their stock and just transitioned to SKCM White when they ran out for example. More likely switches like SKCM Greens or non-damp SKCM Creams since they were more of one off's maybe.

[chyros]

I got into contact with an Alps employee who confirmed they deliberately varied switch force to suit various customers' needs. These switches aren't stiff for no reason, indeed.

Damn, surely you also asked this employee what lubricant Alps used on their early SKCM switches?!

Yes, I tried to get a lot of info out of him. He actually made keyboards in the UK for Alps. He seemed to have forgotten a fair bit though. He's retiring later this year, and once I have more time on my hands I'll see if I can contact him again .

Thats really cool! Wonder if Alps has any NOS switches laying around. Probably not the 1st gen switches like SKCM Blue since I imagine they just used up all their stock and just transitioned to SKCM White when they ran out for example. More likely switches like SKCM Greens or non-damp SKCM Creams since they were more of one off's maybe.

Almost certainly not. None of the products they list in their catalog have had these switches for 20 years or so. It's expensive to have stuff lying around for that long, I'm pretty certain they'll have either used it up or dumped it, that's why they switched to Forward after all. I imagine they sold off the last stock of their last switches, SKCM Black, to Silitek off which they kept making AT101s for FOREVER.

[E3E]

Yep, I found a bunch of boards out in the wild, that is, the online wilderness of eBay late one morning.

https://deskthority.net/photos-f62/xerox-docutech-keyboards-and-restoration-t13229.html

I kind of documented it on DT, but I have many more pictures of the entire process on my SD card.

How many boards did you find in total, my friend? Were you able to find one with this layout? Congrats on having the hook-up, dude!



Mainly note the short left shift and the standard US layout. I've seen a european Daybreak board with it in AZERTY, but not a US layout board.

That board you show definitely has pine switches. Beautiful shade they have. 

I couldn't find it in my heart to dismantle them for their switches, so I just keep them as they are. What are your plans for them? Oh! And what model years are yours?

[nateth]

Sorry for the delay everyone. I've been busy with "family" stuff that's been a bit over the top. Anyway...

The boards are slowly but surely being cleaned. I'm going to show off the pine one the most since it's in fantastic condition.

I actually sometimes do product photography at work, so I have a studio available that I'll use to shoot some pictures.

I know the guy who owned these DocuTech presses a few years ago before he sold his business and retired the presses. There's a total of three DocuTech keyboards that I bought from him that were still connected to the presses in his warehouse.

The Daybreak board is one I found on eBay the other day, and it hasn't come in yet. I'm hoping it's got green switches, but it might be brown.


I think the DocuTech pine board may have been new old stock or a Xerox  refurbished board given it's condition and lack of yellowing (in relation to the other two).
There's a tag on it that seems to indicate it was sold/issued in 2007 presumably from Xerox directly. I saw Xerox repairmen work on the operational presses as late as 2014, so they may still service them. That would imply to me that there are possibly more out there currently in Xerox's hands.

Btw, if you haven't messaged me about buying them then don't bother. I'm not looking to drive the prices up, and apparently "The Godfather" is buying keyboards because I had an offer "I couldn't refuse" for the Pine board. As for the other two (maybe three if you include the Daybreak board.) I have people who've PMed me left and right, so if for some reason anything falls through there's plenty of people in line already. Which I feel really bad about because I had no idea how rare these are. If I use my friend's contacts to maybe find more then I'll be sure to bring them here, but I can't say I'm super-hopeful...mainly because I'm a pessimist.

E3E, I'll shoot the tags and upload them later today.

Edit: Added to the last paragraph.

[nateth]

Link to eBay Daybreak board: https://www.ebay.com/itm/291824893374

Bamboo DocuTech Labels:



This is the pine board:

And some sort of labeling potentially from Xerox. I know the guy who owned these, and he didn't add the label.


Edited to add the pine board.

[nateth]

E3E, it looks like all three Docutech boards are from 97-98. I'll ask the original owner about the history. He may not remember to be honest.

I'm trying to figure out how I have a pine board that was made in '97.
I'm still very new at the whole vintage keyboard thing, but this board looks like it might be rebuilt?

See here:

Is the difference in yellowing between two pieces of ABS unusual?

[chyros]

Jeez, really?! 98 is quite far down the timeline, I hadn't expected them that late Oo .

[nateth]

Jeez, really?! 98 is quite far down the timeline, I hadn't expected them that late Oo .

Look at the year on the labels. I'm not sure how else to read that date given what was printed on E3E's boards.

I'm wondering if these started to get hard to find for even Xerox. Presumably they would have gotten all the boards back from leased presses, but a lot of the presses stayed in service for 10+ years. As boards wore out, they may have had to start remanufacturing with old parts? This is pure conjecture on my part.

I realize boards are supposed to last for a long long time, but I'd imagine that these switches could get pretty damn dirty surrounded by toner powder.

[nateth]

The Xerox Daybreak board I got for comparison just came in with Brown switches.

Looks like it was manufactured a few months before I was born...


Definitely a bit more yellow.






I'll compare it to the greens when I get home.

[E3E]

Wow, yeah. Mine seemed to fall in the window of Alps' actual speculated timeline when considering when pine Alps stopped appearing in their catalog. The boards I have that had pine were from 1990 and 1991, while the bamboo boards were from 1996 and 1997 (the only one made in Mexico was the 97 model; perhaps 1996 was the last year of US production?).

The 1997 pine Docutech you have is very strange, but I can imagine it could have been serviced and had the entire PCB swapped out for an older PCB that was ready to go in the early 90s. I can't imagine they went through the pain and labor of swapping every switch out and putting in pines.  I'd think that you'd more likely see a mix if they were replacing switches individually.

On the other hand, it could be possible that they made a late batch with pine switches that were still in stock.

Can you check the PCB of the 1997 pine board? Both of my pine boards had PCBs like this:



While the later boards from 96 and 97 had different pcbs:



The chips are also different. On the earlier model, the controller was a NEC chip while the later models had Xerox chips

More

Also the connectors on the older 90 and 91 boards had 89 in the numbers stamped on them:



The 96 had "95" stamped on it:



and the 97 had "97" stamped on it.


Also note the subtle differences here. The later connectors have a "frame" around those numbers in the middle while the older ones don't.

So check that to see if maybe you've got old components or not. The IC chips themselves should have stamps that tell you the date as well.

Lastly, here are PCB revision numbers:

For the early Docutechs

For the late Docutechs

[chyros]

Right, so the timeframe for these is actually about 1996-1998 AFAWK? I guess even the pine ones must have been quite late to the scene. That'd strengthen the suspicion they weren't based on meant to be a continuation of SKCM Brown as that had been out of production for almost a decade by that time xD .

[E3E]

Right, so the timeframe for these is actually about 1996-1998 AFAWK? I guess even the pine ones must have been quite late to the scene. That'd strengthen the suspicion they weren't based on meant to be a continuation of SKCM Brown as that had been out of production for almost a decade by that time xD .

Well, I'd say that bamboo goes back to 1995 at least, but if the wiki is to be trusted, then it can go as far back as 1993 (info derived from an Alps catalog, right?). Nubbinator's find was a 1995 keyboard and it had bamboo switches. I personally think that 1993 is the transition year. There were probably some pine early in 1993 and bamboo late into that year, but the 93-94 year hasn't really been documented. I believe Jacobolus' pine Docutech was 1992. 

So far, we've seen Docutechs from 1990, 1991, 1992, 1995, 1996, 1997, and 1998.
 
Nuclearsandwich has another pine Docutech, but he has not been around for a while. I tried to ask him about it but got no response in terms of model year. I wouldn't be surprised if pine did go into 1994 though, but I feel doubtful for the time being. 
 
Pretty much waiting on nateth's report on the PCB and other timestamp identifiers on the 1997 pine Docutech before we can make any assumptions there. It could be a replacement from an earlier year. Definitely eager to see what it turns out being.

As far as the transition from SKCM Brown to SKCM Green, well... I still feel like there's quite a bit of a link. As you can see, the Daybreak keyboards had SKCM Brown, then followed up with SKCM Green on the Docutechs, and those were produced into 1989, just a year before the Docutechs in 1990.

[nateth]

Look what I just found on the pine board! A single bamboo switch. I'll definitely crack this when I get the chance, and shoot a few pictures of the PCB.

Sorry for the crappy photo. I'll get a better one up next week. You can't tell in this photo, but the right switch looks darker than the other, and it doesn't have the slits Maybe a refurb or repair?

[HeeCh2ei]

Congrats. Do you have any plans on that stuff?

[alienman82]

removed.

[E3E]

What's more annoying than someone who hoards, imo, is someone who buys something rare and then doesn't even document it for others to see.

[nubbinator]

What's more annoying than someone who hoards, imo, is someone who buys something rare and then doesn't even document it for others to see.

Agreed, which is why I try to document all my uncommon stuff pretty well.  That said, you do sometimes have people who don't know that it's rare and don't document it well because they didn't know until it was gone.

[alienman82]

removed.