geekhack
geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: Reaif on Fri, 04 February 2011, 19:16:20
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Hello everyone,
I am fairly new to the world of mechanical keyboards. I recently bought a Das S Ultimate with brown switches, and I haven't been able to stand typing on anything else since.
In any case, that isn't what I'm here for at the moment. I made this thread because when I was out and about today, I stumbled across an old NEC mechanical keyboard in a used computer store. Images can be found here: http://imgur.com/a/F9yZp#Zqpzt Forgive me, for I hadn't cleaned it when I took the pictures, and it REALLY needs to be cleaned.
One of the keycaps was missing, so it was very obvious at a glance that it was mechanical. The catch is that I can't seem to figure out what kind it is. I thought it was an ALPS, but after checking out the wiki (http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title=ALPS+switches), it didn't seem to match any of them. They also don't strike me as buckling spring, though I really don't know what the external part of those switches look like.
As far as what the switches feel and sound like, they are tactile and clicky, though it doesn't seem as loud as videos of blue switches would indicate. They take almost the same force to press as my brown switches do. I haven't tried cherry blues, but I imagine that this switch feels and sounds similar to those.
The overall construction is quite nice. After opening it up, I found that it is steel plate mounted, and it also has a little recessed switch that toggles from AT to PC/XT. Despite its obvious age, the switches still feel quite nice. Also, the keys that would have been used most commonly feel very consistent with the keys that likely had less use. Once this thing is cleaned up, it will be very nice to type on.
It took me a while to get to this point, but I hope someone can help identify these things. I did some research, but cannot identify them. Anyone here know?
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Wow thanks for the quick response. When you said Space Invaders, I thought you were joking at first. I googled it, and lo and behold, there they were. Also after you mentioned it, I can totally see it now. When you press them, the contacts come together to make it looks like a little mouth or something.
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I noticed too that razer used some other switch. I was thinking, What the hell is that?
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Well, I do quite like this keyboard. I think I'd like to do a usb mod. I even happen to have a spare blue cube laying about.
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Well, there's a couple ways to do USB conversions.
-You can build a new controller from scratch and wire it to the PCB.
-You can severe the PCB matrices, salvage a controller board from a cheap rubber dome board, examine the matrices, and wire the rubber dome's key matrices to the NMB using wire. However, if you have N-key rollover, you'll lose it.
-You can install a PS/2 -> USB converter. This is the simplest if you have a PS/2 or AT-5 DIN keyboard.
You generally use the top two if you keyboard uses a funky interface but has nice switches, e.g. ADB, RJ11, XT, etc.
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I like simple :)
Besides, I don't think this keyboard is nkro anyway.
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Incidentally, that's not a NEC, but an NMB. Made in Thailand, and I think the FCC IC also matches. I don't think anyone else ever made boards with space invader switches, and NEC had a mechanical switch design of their own anyway.
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Incidentally, that's not a NEC, but an NMB. Made in Thailand, and I think the FCC IC also matches. I don't think anyone else ever made boards with space invader switches, and NEC had a mechanical switch design of their own anyway.
I had to lol a little bit when I read this. Not because it is in any way false, but because I made such a stupid mistake. When I found this keyboard, I was actually looking at this one and at an actual NEC board. I must have gotten a little mixed up when I was typing that bit out.