Keytronic Boards

[etatauri]

At work, we have a bunch of Keytronic boards which I have never heard of. The casing resembles old-school keyboards like Unicomp or other IBM keyboards. When I popped a keycap I was surprised that is was a rubber dome keyboard. The plunger on these are super long and given the age of these things I was even more surprised at how they feel. Have any of you guys tried them out? I thought all membrane keyboards were junk but the Keytronic was an intriguingly pleasant experience.

[chyros]

Key Tronic was the king of rubber. They were possibly the biggest pushers of rubber dome keyboards. Interestingly, they still exist and are doing well.

Some people consider Key Tronic rubber to be quite superior to other rubber domes. I've found dozens of Key Tronic keyboards over time, but found none of them to be particularly good myself.

Before rubber domes, they made a lot of foam and foil boards, some of which felt very terrible, and way before that, very stiff magnetic reed boards.

[Blaise170]

Keytronic was definitely one of the biggest producers of rubber domes. Chicony was (and is) a big contender.

[klennkellon]

I say that Keytronic could be part of the push to switch to rubber as the standard keyboard type.

I'll give Cherry this. Their switches aren't the best but if it weren't for them we may have not seen the mechanical keyboard resurgence.

[Riverman]

There's a computer surplus place in Seattle called Re-PC that had a half dozen NOS Keytronic keyboard and mouse sets the last time I was there.  They're the old light grey color, and the mice are old enough that they have balls.  They feel amazingly nice.  I was surprised to see they used rubber domes when I looked up the part number.  Keytronic did/does make some nice rubber dome keyboards.  I remember not liking a Keytronic I had in the early '90s on my Mac IIci, though.  It felt like crap, especially compared to the Apple Extended Keyboard II it replaced.

[Findecanor]

They got out of the European market in the early '00s because of changed chemicals regulation.

Not all old Key Tronic feel good. Of the ones I know, the "Ergo Force" are the best ones. Then comes the just previous generation and the "Lifetime", "KT 800" and "KT 2000". The ones with curved backplane feel good but have rattly plastic stabilisers that go under the barrel plate.

[macguy80]

And now, as a follow-up, if it hasn't already been reported elsewhere on GH, it would seem they are out of the keyboard business entirely (except for repairs). I found their toll-free number and called it just to see if it still worked, and this is what I got:

"You've reached the Keytronic keyboard 800 line. We no longer manufacture keyboards. If you need to have a keyboard repaired..."

[funkmon]

Not to keep posting in a 2 year old thread, but that's kind of too bad. I understand Keytronic is still a successful business but in some kind of other manufacturing crap.

I as recently as a month ago was in a foreign office environment and found a keytronic, and unplugged it and carried it to the computer at which I was working, and I proceeded to do that every day for two weeks.

It's a pretty good rubber dome, IMO. Not awesome, but it's one of the best without a slider I've used, and the alternatives were chiclet style. I wanted to die.