NMB 122 keyboards

[sean4star]

Can anyone shed light on these?  Type of switches etc?

eBay Link

[xmagusx]

Only vague point is does each board have an adapter or is it one adapter per lot of 6? Anyone asked?

[kishy]

If they're what I think they are, they have domes and they are natively AT (hence the PS/2 adapters).

[tgujay]

If they're what I think they are, they have domes and they are natively AT (hence the PS/2 adapters).

Damn, I love that format.

[phoenix1234]

At first, I thought they are G80-2500  6xG80-2500 for 50$?
On the second thought, I asked myself, no way  )

[dorkvader]

Hey, I've bought from him before. I don't know where he turns up all his KB goodies, but there they are.

Pretty sure they are not cherry, sorry

For what it's worth, I think this is totally worth the price :
http://www.ebay.com/itm/281079960773

LPFK uses cherry (M8 I think) switches. Dials are generally awesome. Images in my imgur:
http://imgur.com/a/G4e1P http://imgur.com/a/odZst http://imgur.com/a/XqcUR

[sean4star]

How would those dials work?  I've never seen that before.

[kishy]

Off the top of my head, they're used with (IIRC) the 5080 graphics workstation for various rendering tasks.

[dorkvader]

Off the top of my head, they're used with (IIRC) the 5080 graphics workstation for various rendering tasks.

yes, the 5085/5083 (5083 is the quintessential tablet) IBM CAD/graphics stuff. I had a whole writeup on this about halfway done until I realized that almost nobody cared, so I told the people who expressed an interest, and called it a day.

The dials are not "new". Unigraphics and HP had them (though HP had 3*3 grid) They are for analog input to the terminal, rotations and stuff. There's no "stop" on the potentiometer, and they appear to have a ball bearing on top and be oil filled. Another version of the dials for the same system exists, but made in mexico and not as good (or so I hear).

But you can just rotate them to move/rotate your object. Nowadays there are projects to keep using them (they operate over serial) mainly as analog faders and the like.

The LPFK is also serial, the protocol is well described, and there are some projects (for linux) to use it as a binary clock or run conway's game of life, and things like that. I plan to use mine as a clock sometime, I just need to figure out how to connect it to a teensy. I think the UART pins can talk to it via serial, but I don't know a whole lot about that.

Those japan servo pots probably cost like $50 each back in the day. They're top quality and a lot of the reason the dials sold for over $900 in the early 1980's. The LPFK was $1100

Source: http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/ShowDoc.wss?docURL=/common/ssi/rep_ca/5/897/ENUS183-145/index.html&breadCrum=DET001PT022&url=buttonpressed=DET002PT005&specific_index=DET001PEF502&DET015PGL002=DET001PEF011&submit.x=7&submit.y=8&lang=en_GB&request_locale=en

[jacobolus]

Huh. how do those compare to other potentiometers/rotary encoders/etc. w/r/t feel, accuracy, precision, etc.

i.e. if I want to add some knobs to little electronics projects, would it be good to get one of these and pull the knobs apart, or should I just buy a new little rotary encoder somewhere else [e.g. a hall effect one, etc.]?