how is a keyboard organized?

[Allthunbs]

Hi:

Ok, here's the rub: I bought a Drevo SEER (Mini 61 key) keyboard and it came with Gateron switches instead of Cherry MX. I have the Blademaster PRO with Cherry silent red LED switches and it is the cat's meow in comparison. I'm wondering what I can do to change the SEER from Gateron over to the Cherry switches; how is a keyboard organized? Are the switches interchangeable? Do I need only change the key caps to make a difference? Are they interchangeable?

BTW, keyboard size does make a difference. I come out of the key capture world of the 1970s 1980s and there's a reason that the number keys were moved to the interior of the keyboard --- less hand movement, higher productivity. At the time I made $0.50 / thousand keystrokes, verified, less errors and I was able to support my family. Hard bottom keystrokes were outlawed as it tired the typists too quickly. Dual detent were mandatory and if your employer's equipment didn't support your keyboard you passed on the job. I knew my keyboard intimately, inside and out. It wore out before key capture collapsed. I've been searching for a PC equivalent ever since and still can't find one.  Cherry MX Silent Red with "O-rings" are about 60% of the way there but that's as close as I've gotten. Gateron is at about 20% - it registers the keystroke. Not much more to be said. "O-rings" are useless.

[Maledicted]

Hi:

Ok, here's the rub: I bought a Drevo SEER (Mini 61 key) keyboard and it came with Gateron switches instead of Cherry MX. I have the Blademaster PRO with Cherry silent red LED switches and it is the cat's meow in comparison. I'm wondering what I can do to change the SEER from Gateron over to the Cherry switches; how is a keyboard organized? Are the switches interchangeable? Do I need only change the key caps to make a difference? Are they interchangeable?

BTW, keyboard size does make a difference. I come out of the key capture world of the 1970s 1980s and there's a reason that the number keys were moved to the interior of the keyboard --- less hand movement, higher productivity. At the time I made $0.50 / thousand keystrokes, verified, less errors and I was able to support my family. Hard bottom keystrokes were outlawed as it tired the typists too quickly. Dual detent were mandatory and if your employer's equipment didn't support your keyboard you passed on the job. I knew my keyboard intimately, inside and out. It wore out before key capture collapsed. I've been searching for a PC equivalent ever since and still can't find one.  Cherry MX Silent Red with "O-rings" are about 60% of the way there but that's as close as I've gotten. Gateron is at about 20% - it registers the keystroke. Not much more to be said. "O-rings" are useless.

What sort of Gateron switches did you choose for that board? Reds? What is it that you like about the MX silent reds vs the switches in the Drevo board?

Some boards have what are called hot swap sockets. Some do not. Without hot swap sockets, you would need to desolder both contacts for the switch before that switch could be removed. As you can imagine, this is quite the chore. Considering the price of that one while also offering Gaterons, those switches are probably soldered directly to the PCB.

What difference changing caps will make depends on what sort of difference you want. Thicker caps will generally make a switch sound lower-pitched than thinner ones, and may make bottoming out feel a little more solid.

What sort of job were you doing where a smaller keyboard actually resulted in less hand movement? Most people use their mouse between switching between the alphanumeric cluster and the arrow keys, etc, anyway. That wouldn't have applied so much in the 70s and 80s, but it does today.

What is this about bottoming out hard being outlawed? What country/region would do such a thing? I bottom out with undampened switches all day every day without issue. There's much debate about that topic.

What is this about dual detents? What do you mean by that term? In the 70s there weren't really even any standard protocols. It was the wild west. Even in the 80s IBM alone had multiple proprietary keyboard protocols and interfaces (some of which were duplicated for the purpose of PC clones).

MX reds don't have any o-rings, the switch's slider itself has dampeners built into the design.

What is it, specifically, that you're looking for in a switch?

[Allthunbs]

What sort of Gateron switches did you choose for that board? Reds? What is it that you like about the MX silent reds vs the switches in the Drevo board?


the board came with browns only because I have a Filco with browns and that gave me a basis of comparison. I added one 50AR O-Ring, (between a pencil eraser and a tyre tread) the same as I have on the cherry MX silent reds but it still bottoms out. I added a second 1.5mm 30AR and it interfered with the key being registered. I have a heavy hand and the bottom comes hard. the 50ar does part of the job but not all. I also found that the Gateron key caps have a different stem than the Cherry and the O-Rings don't sit the same.

Some boards have what are called hot swap sockets. Some do not. Without hot swap sockets, you would need to desolder both contacts for the switch before that switch could be removed. As you can imagine, this is quite the chore. Considering the price of that one while also offering Gaterons, those switches are probably soldered directly to the PCB.

I fear that is the case.

What difference changing caps will make depends on what sort of difference you want. Thicker caps will generally make a switch sound lower-pitched than thinner ones, and may make bottoming out feel a little more solid.

sound has little influence on me. I learned how to type on an old Underwood mechanical typewriter and you could hear your misteaks<<<<<<<<mistakes before you read them.

What sort of job were you doing where a smaller keyboard actually resulted in less hand movement? Most people use their mouse between switching between the alphanumeric cluster and the arrow keys, etc, anyway. That wouldn't have applied so much in the 70s and 80s, but it does today.

In the early days of computing, you wrote programs with plug boards and information was stored on cards with holes in them. later, these were replaced with paper tapes and 5MB Winchester Hard Disks. Database information had to be transcribed from invoices or other pieces of paper and accounts receivable and payable all had to be transcribed to hard disks. Even today, there is still a certain amount of transcription that goes on.

We had a return key, tab key and backspace. some programs wouldn't allow cursor keys.

What is this about bottoming out hard being outlawed? What country/region would do such a thing? I bottom out with undampened switches all day every day without issue. There's much debate about that topic.

Some computer manufacturers ran entire research projects to find out how to have the most productive key capture people. they found that a function key beside the space bar on the right hand side anchored the right hand. that positioned the index finger, second and third fingers perfectly over "J,K,L" keys that would become "1,2,3" and so on up the keyboard. "7,8,9" were unchanged. the key shapes were different and the space bar was more to the left relative to the rest of the keyboard. "M, ',', '.'" differed on some keyboards but were sort of "0,00,".". Some programs required a comma so that was one variation.

they found that moving your hands to a separate number pad interfered with the flow of data through the keyboard and moved the typists concentration to the number pad which induced more errors. What should be a natural movement lost the typist seconds. at  that time research had value. now, it's the cost accountants that have cost millions of jobs and many repetitive stress injuries. One of my favourite questions is around "how much is a human life worth?" Nothing, according to company presidents and cost accountants.

as for the bottoming out issue, when I'm healthy I routinely hit 140 wpm and I used to keep it up for 14 to 16 hours, less bathroom breaks --- smoking continuously, eating as i typed. Pizza was a favourite as was sandwiches from the Dutch delicatessen next door to one of my customer's premises. I lived on coffee, Tim Horton's was <<de rigeur>>. if you were coming to the office and you didn't bring Tim Horton's coffee, your project got shifted to the next day.



What is this about dual detents? What do you mean by that term? In the 70s there weren't really even any standard protocols. It was the wild west. Even in the 80s IBM alone had multiple proprietary keyboard protocols and interfaces (some of which were duplicated for the purpose of PC clones).


This is the next step to the above. the top of the keystroke is 'rest'. When you press down on the key you encounter the first spring. this is your active phase; you're actually  doing work. at some point, like the trigger on a gun, you register the keystroke. this is where you encounter the second spring, which, when combined with the first spring encourages you to stop the active phase and return to 'rest'. the second spring slows your finger, stops it and your active phase and pushes your finger back to the top of the keystroke. My early keyboards were customizible and I could swap out the pads of the second springs to make them stiffer. This adjustment allowed me to almost eliminate hard bottoming the keys. When I started to hard bottom, I was getting too tired and it was time to quit.

MX reds don't have any o-rings, the switch's slider itself has dampeners built into the design.

as per above, I've been experimenting with different stiffness of O-Rings hoping to find something soft enough to give me that second spring effect.

What is it, specifically, that you're looking for in a switch?n

I'm looking for a dual detent keystroke. one that will protect my aging fingers. I'm writing books now and I've returned to the point that I can type as fast as i can think (Ca. 120 wpm, 90 in colour). Not as fast as I can key capture but thought never enters into that world.

[Maledicted]

What sort of Gateron switches did you choose for that board? Reds? What is it that you like about the MX silent reds vs the switches in the Drevo board?


the board came with browns only because I have a Filco with browns and that gave me a basis of comparison. I added one 50AR O-Ring, (between a pencil eraser and a tyre tread) the same as I have on the cherry MX silent reds but it still bottoms out. I added a second 1.5mm 30AR and it interfered with the key being registered. I have a heavy hand and the bottom comes hard. the 50ar does part of the job but not all. I also found that the Gateron key caps have a different stem than the Cherry and the O-Rings don't sit the same.

I quite like Gateron browns myself if my choices were those or MX browns. I'm not a tactile guy though. Every switch bottoms out with enough force. The idea of dampened switches is mostly to reduce how much noise they make when they do bottom out, and when they return. I can't think of what would be noticeably different about Gateron brown stems and MX red stems externally. They need to match certain tolerances for standard MX caps to fit either of them. Some switches made by Gaote and Kaihua have different stem designs with more protruding than just the stem itself, but I don't think your Gaterons would.

What difference changing caps will make depends on what sort of difference you want. Thicker caps will generally make a switch sound lower-pitched than thinner ones, and may make bottoming out feel a little more solid.

sound has little influence on me. I learned how to type on an old Underwood mechanical typewriter and you could hear your misteaks<<<<<<<<mistakes before you read them.

That's awesome. I have felt a few mechanical typewriters, briefly, years ago. They were a novelty already by the time I knew of them.

What sort of job were you doing where a smaller keyboard actually resulted in less hand movement? Most people use their mouse between switching between the alphanumeric cluster and the arrow keys, etc, anyway. That wouldn't have applied so much in the 70s and 80s, but it does today.

In the early days of computing, you wrote programs with plug boards and information was stored on cards with holes in them. later, these were replaced with paper tapes and 5MB Winchester Hard Disks. Database information had to be transcribed from invoices or other pieces of paper and accounts receivable and payable all had to be transcribed to hard disks. Even today, there is still a certain amount of transcription that goes on.

We had a return key, tab key and backspace. some programs wouldn't allow cursor keys.

I am aware of early computing. I had a professor that talked about punch card programming. Before the mouse was commonplace, something like a 60% board having some tactical advantage over larger boards for very specific applications would have made more sense than it does today.

What is this about bottoming out hard being outlawed? What country/region would do such a thing? I bottom out with undampened switches all day every day without issue. There's much debate about that topic.

Some computer manufacturers ran entire research projects to find out how to have the most productive key capture people. they found that a function key beside the space bar on the right hand side anchored the right hand. that positioned the index finger, second and third fingers perfectly over "J,K,L" keys that would become "1,2,3" and so on up the keyboard. "7,8,9" were unchanged. the key shapes were different and the space bar was more to the left relative to the rest of the keyboard. "M, ',', '.'" differed on some keyboards but were sort of "0,00,".". Some programs required a comma so that was one variation.

they found that moving your hands to a separate number pad interfered with the flow of data through the keyboard and moved the typists concentration to the number pad which induced more errors. What should be a natural movement lost the typist seconds. at  that time research had value. now, it's the cost accountants that have cost millions of jobs and many repetitive stress injuries. One of my favourite questions is around "how much is a human life worth?" Nothing, according to company presidents and cost accountants.

as for the bottoming out issue, when I'm healthy I routinely hit 140 wpm and I used to keep it up for 14 to 16 hours, less bathroom breaks --- smoking continuously, eating as i typed. Pizza was a favourite as was sandwiches from the Dutch delicatessen next door to one of my customer's premises. I lived on coffee, Tim Horton's was <<de rigeur>>. if you were coming to the office and you didn't bring Tim Horton's coffee, your project got shifted to the next day.

That's all very interesting, but it doesn't answer my question. A lot of people type happily away without any dampening at all and bottom out hard without any ill effect, and have for decades. Where/why would keyboards that bottom out hard be outlawed?

It would make sense to do all of that research, of course, and to come to such conclusions before GUIs were commonplace. The problem even with that is hotkeys. I'm already doing 2-3 key hotkeys with dedicated arrow keys in spreadsheets sometimes. Adding any more to that with a function layer is a no-go for me, so I need at least dedicated arrow keys. I don't use a number pad at all myself, but I have long fingers. Now there aren't many applications in which navigating entirely with a keyboard is more efficient than also using a mouse. Programming, writing, and spreadsheets are all good candidates. There's very little else left.

I feel I have heard of Tim Horton's for some reason. I drink a heck of a lot of coffee.

What is this about dual detents? What do you mean by that term? In the 70s there weren't really even any standard protocols. It was the wild west. Even in the 80s IBM alone had multiple proprietary keyboard protocols and interfaces (some of which were duplicated for the purpose of PC clones).

This is the next step to the above. the top of the keystroke is 'rest'. When you press down on the key you encounter the first spring. this is your active phase; you're actually  doing work. at some point, like the trigger on a gun, you register the keystroke. this is where you encounter the second spring, which, when combined with the first spring encourages you to stop the active phase and return to 'rest'. the second spring slows your finger, stops it and your active phase and pushes your finger back to the top of the keystroke. My early keyboards were customizible and I could swap out the pads of the second springs to make them stiffer. This adjustment allowed me to almost eliminate hard bottoming the keys. When I started to hard bottom, I was getting too tired and it was time to quit.

Most switches, old and new, only have one spring. This depends on what you define as a spring though. IBM's beam spring switches did have two springs in each switch. One beam spring to provide tactility when it would buckle, and a coil spring to act as a return spring when you release the key.

I stole a crude animation of it from the Deskthority wiki:


Other (mostly clicky, but some tactile) switches have additional mechanisms besides the return spring that you could say also act sort of like a spring. I don't know of any vintage ones that were expressly designed to be customizable offhand. What is this switch you speak of? The terminology you're using is not what anyone else really uses, but you seem to be trying to describe clicky switches, since the "trigger of a gun" could probably only be considered relatively sharp/abrupt tactility.

Clicky switches, and stiff tactiles, usually have the opposite effect of what you describe, however. The force required to overcome the tactile bump makes it harder to prevent bottoming out, if such a thing is desirable.

The closest thing I can think of offhand to something you might want is Matias' quiet "linear" switches. They have a slight, gradual tactile bump just before the bottom of travel, which actually comes from resistance against the slider by a leaf spring. The switch bottoms out against the dampeners right after that.

MX reds don't have any o-rings, the switch's slider itself has dampeners built into the design.

as per above, I've been experimenting with different stiffness of O-Rings hoping to find something soft enough to give me that second spring effect.

I don't know that adding an o-ring to a dampened switch is going to change much of anything at all about its characteristics other than reduce overall travel when it does bottom out and change how bottoming out feels, almost the same as using it with undampened switches.

What is it, specifically, that you're looking for in a switch?

I'm looking for a dual detent keystroke. one that will protect my aging fingers. I'm writing books now and I've returned to the point that I can type as fast as i can think (Ca. 120 wpm, 90 in colour). Not as fast as I can key capture but thought never enters into that world.

What switches did you use previously? I can't think of anything that I have ever heard of that functions exactly the way that you describe.

[Allthunbs]

Sorry, I screwed up the quotes. I'll try again next time.

I quite like Gateron browns myself if my choices were those or MX browns. I'm not a tactile guy though. Every switch bottoms out with enough force. The idea of dampened switches is mostly to reduce how much noise they make when they do bottom out, and when they return. I can't think of what would be noticeably different about Gateron brown stems and MX red stems externally. They need to match certain tolerances for standard MX caps to fit either of them. Some switches made by Gaote and Kaihua have different stem designs with more protruding than just the stem itself, but I don't think your Gaterons would.

That's awesome. I have felt a few mechanical typewriters, briefly, years ago. They were a novelty already by the time I knew of them.

I have an Underwood, 1926 and a Smith Corona portable circa 1955(?)

I am aware of early computing. I had a professor that talked about punch card programming. Before the mouse was commonplace, something like a 60% board having some tactical advantage over larger boards for very specific applications would have made more sense than it does today.


That's all very interesting, but it doesn't answer my question. A lot of people type happily away without any dampening at all and bottom out hard without any ill effect, and have for decades. Where/why would keyboards that bottom out hard be outlawed?

The biggest difference is that I had to make a living at $0.50 per thousand key strokes and they deducted errors and I make a lot of errors. Second, this was a long day and you stayed until you finished the job, no matter how long it took. Thirdly, this stuff was boring, numbers all day long, you took every advantage and made it pay. It wasn't outlawed, it didn't pay to have stiff fingers at the end of the day. I'd sleep in the car and the next morning wash my face and get back to work. If you were still tired from the day before you were in for one hell of a long day. Nothing was outlawed. I purchased my own key capture keyboard when it became evident to me what I needed. It was a Data General and it had a spring for the first travel and a foam pad with a huge metal foil across the bottom that shorted out the switch on the circuit board. Then I went to a Hall Effect keyboard on an AES word processor, modified it with a second spring and that keyboard lasted about four years then it was worn out. After that, Word Perfect by Alan Ashton hit the market place and I ran the Satellite SoftWare International version 1.0 on a Data General Nova 1210. Back to my original keyboard. The client was someone alarmed when I took his terminal apart to install my keyboard. Then the PC hit the marketplace and all my skills overran everything on the market except Word Perfect for the PC but every keyboard was a kludge and virtually useless but it was the only thing available so you coped. It was a godsend when Windows 3.1 hit the market place. The mouse replaced inordinate amounts of keystrokes. it wasn't until I retired and started to write programs that I started to feel the effects of long days again. I wrote an accounting program from books of original entry to tax returns; several smart systems and a variety of technical books for our government. Then I started to write a series of novels about altruism and selfishness, the greed economy vs. the humanist economy, and what happens to society when focus is placed on education and people being allowed to be gainfully employed for life. Now, I'm on a drive to return to my old productive keyboard.

It would make sense to do all of that research, of course, and to come to such conclusions before GUIs were commonplace. The problem even with that is hotkeys. I'm already doing 2-3 key hotkeys with dedicated arrow keys in spreadsheets sometimes. Adding any more to that with a function layer is a no-go for me, so I need at least dedicated arrow keys. I don't use a number pad at all myself, but I have long fingers. Now there aren't many applications in which navigating entirely with a keyboard is more efficient than also using a mouse. Programming, writing, and spreadsheets are all good candidates. There's very little else left.

I feel I have heard of Tim Horton's for some reason. I drink a heck of a lot of coffee.


Most switches, old and new, only have one spring. This depends on what you define as a spring though. IBM's beam spring switches did have two springs in each switch. One beam spring to provide tactility when it would buckle, and a coil spring to act as a return spring when you release the key.


I've never run across these. IBM is famous for touting greatness and delivering something that isn't.

Other (mostly clicky, but some tactile) switches have additional mechanisms besides the return spring that you could say also act sort of like a spring. I don't know of any vintage ones that were expressly designed to be customizable offhand. What is this switch you speak of? The terminology you're using is not what anyone else really uses, but you seem to be trying to describe clicky switches, since the "trigger of a gun" could probably only be considered relatively sharp/abrupt tactility.

No, I'm talking about the surprise effect when you squeeze the trigger of a gun. Your finger doesn't know when the character will register only that when it hits that 'detente' or second spring it relaxes and allows the springs to return to rest.

Clicky switches, and stiff tactiles, usually have the opposite effect of what you describe, however. The force required to overcome the tactile bump makes it harder to prevent bottoming out, if such a thing is desirable.

No, too tiring. I'm getting old, and lazy.

The closest thing I can think of offhand to something you might want is Matias' quiet "linear" switches. They have a slight, gradual tactile bump just before the bottom of travel, which actually comes from resistance against the slider by a leaf spring. The switch bottoms out against the dampeners right after that.

I've gotten a message off to Matias so we'll see what they have to say. The give away is their claim to faster typing. That is one of the side effects of dual detente. Now if they have it illuminated, with Bluetooth 5.x, USB C, and a big battery.

I don't know that adding an o-ring to a dampened switch is going to change much of anything at all about its characteristics other than reduce overall travel when it does bottom out and change how bottoming out feels, almost the same as using it with undampened switches.


I'm close using 30AR O-Rings but I have a thickness problem.

What switches did you use previously? I can't think of anything that I have ever heard of that functions exactly the way that you describe.


foam bottom, hall effect, and just about every version of PC keyboard you can think of from Sperry-Rand to Das Keyboard. I've currently settled on Cherry MX silent red but Matias sound's better. (I'll see what they have to say.

Thanks for the conversation. It's serving me well to clarify the difference between want and need.

[Maledicted]

Sorry, I screwed up the quotes. I'll try again next time.

There are quote tags, and a quote button to generate them. You don't need to change the color of the text. I usually click the quote button in the top right of a post and then copy the opening quote tag for every section I want to break the quotes down into, making sure to close each quote with another closing tag.

I quite like Gateron browns myself if my choices were those or MX browns. I'm not a tactile guy though. Every switch bottoms out with enough force. The idea of dampened switches is mostly to reduce how much noise they make when they do bottom out, and when they return. I can't think of what would be noticeably different about Gateron brown stems and MX red stems externally. They need to match certain tolerances for standard MX caps to fit either of them. Some switches made by Gaote and Kaihua have different stem designs with more protruding than just the stem itself, but I don't think your Gaterons would.

That's awesome. I have felt a few mechanical typewriters, briefly, years ago. They were a novelty already by the time I knew of them.

I have an Underwood, 1926 and a Smith Corona portable circa 1955(?)

That's pretty awesome. I have thought about getting one, but then I would wonder why the monstrosity is taking up space.

I am aware of early computing. I had a professor that talked about punch card programming. Before the mouse was commonplace, something like a 60% board having some tactical advantage over larger boards for very specific applications would have made more sense than it does today.


That's all very interesting, but it doesn't answer my question. A lot of people type happily away without any dampening at all and bottom out hard without any ill effect, and have for decades. Where/why would keyboards that bottom out hard be outlawed?

The biggest difference is that I had to make a living at $0.50 per thousand key strokes and they deducted errors and I make a lot of errors. Second, this was a long day and you stayed until you finished the job, no matter how long it took. Thirdly, this stuff was boring, numbers all day long, you took every advantage and made it pay. It wasn't outlawed, it didn't pay to have stiff fingers at the end of the day. I'd sleep in the car and the next morning wash my face and get back to work. If you were still tired from the day before you were in for one hell of a long day. Nothing was outlawed. I purchased my own key capture keyboard when it became evident to me what I needed. It was a Data General and it had a spring for the first travel and a foam pad with a huge metal foil across the bottom that shorted out the switch on the circuit board. Then I went to a Hall Effect keyboard on an AES word processor, modified it with a second spring and that keyboard lasted about four years then it was worn out. After that, Word Perfect by Alan Ashton hit the market place and I ran the Satellite SoftWare International version 1.0 on a Data General Nova 1210. Back to my original keyboard. The client was someone alarmed when I took his terminal apart to install my keyboard. Then the PC hit the marketplace and all my skills overran everything on the market except Word Perfect for the PC but every keyboard was a kludge and virtually useless but it was the only thing available so you coped. It was a godsend when Windows 3.1 hit the market place. The mouse replaced inordinate amounts of keystrokes. it wasn't until I retired and started to write programs that I started to feel the effects of long days again. I wrote an accounting program from books of original entry to tax returns; several smart systems and a variety of technical books for our government. Then I started to write a series of novels about altruism and selfishness, the greed economy vs. the humanist economy, and what happens to society when focus is placed on education and people being allowed to be gainfully employed for life. Now, I'm on a drive to return to my old productive keyboard.

That sounds grueling, but I'm not sure how bottoming out hard would have any real effect on that. The Beam spring mechanism that you haven't seen before, and the subsequent buckling spring mechanisms from IBM, were used heavily throughout the 70s and 80s for all manner of typing tasks. They were meant to emulate the feel and sound of typewriters of old. I used to be a web assistant and that job was literally copying and pasting things all day long and/or writing product descriptions. At that time I used regular old rubber domes. I didn't know that mechanicals existed.

True altruism is rare, which is why socialist governments will always fail. Greed is a guaranteed motivator. It motivates people to learn, innovate and apply themselves in all that they do, because they can reap the fruits of their own labor. It is a matter of taking advantage of human nature vs. trying to alter it.

It would make sense to do all of that research, of course, and to come to such conclusions before GUIs were commonplace. The problem even with that is hotkeys. I'm already doing 2-3 key hotkeys with dedicated arrow keys in spreadsheets sometimes. Adding any more to that with a function layer is a no-go for me, so I need at least dedicated arrow keys. I don't use a number pad at all myself, but I have long fingers. Now there aren't many applications in which navigating entirely with a keyboard is more efficient than also using a mouse. Programming, writing, and spreadsheets are all good candidates. There's very little else left.

I feel I have heard of Tim Horton's for some reason. I drink a heck of a lot of coffee.


Most switches, old and new, only have one spring. This depends on what you define as a spring though. IBM's beam spring switches did have two springs in each switch. One beam spring to provide tactility when it would buckle, and a coil spring to act as a return spring when you release the key.


I've never run across these. IBM is famous for touting greatness and delivering something that isn't.

IBM's mechanical keyboards are very highly-regarded. Personally, I use at least one of their Model Fs every day. The PC, if nothing else, lead to the standardization of parts and software around the x86 architecture, if nothing else. Their PowerPC architecture was incredibly powerful by comparison as well, for a time.

Other (mostly clicky, but some tactile) switches have additional mechanisms besides the return spring that you could say also act sort of like a spring. I don't know of any vintage ones that were expressly designed to be customizable offhand. What is this switch you speak of? The terminology you're using is not what anyone else really uses, but you seem to be trying to describe clicky switches, since the "trigger of a gun" could probably only be considered relatively sharp/abrupt tactility.

No, I'm talking about the surprise effect when you squeeze the trigger of a gun. Your finger doesn't know when the character will register only that when it hits that 'detente' or second spring it relaxes and allows the springs to return to rest.

I own quite a few different guns. Most of the ones I seek out have a nice crisp and clean break. I always know when they will go off. Your comparison would apply to maybe the double action pull of a nice Smith revolver, where the full travel of the trigger is so smooth that the hammer falls without any tactile feedback. Most rifles (and most of my handguns) are single action, so there's a point in the pull where there's defined resistance.

Clicky switches, and stiff tactiles, usually have the opposite effect of what you describe, however. The force required to overcome the tactile bump makes it harder to prevent bottoming out, if such a thing is desirable.

No, too tiring. I'm getting old, and lazy.

Are you saying that you do want to prevent bottoming out? That's what always tired me out fast in my attempts, heavy linears that I could actually prevent from bottoming out on, like MX black.

The closest thing I can think of offhand to something you might want is Matias' quiet "linear" switches. They have a slight, gradual tactile bump just before the bottom of travel, which actually comes from resistance against the slider by a leaf spring. The switch bottoms out against the dampeners right after that.

I've gotten a message off to Matias so we'll see what they have to say. The give away is their claim to faster typing. That is one of the side effects of dual detente. Now if they have it illuminated, with Bluetooth 5.x, USB C, and a big battery.

Unfortunately, they have no backlit keyboards, even though they changed the switch housings to transparent in order to facilitate the use of LEDs. I would try getting a Matias switch sample pack or something. The only board they have with Bluetooth is the "Laptop Pro". The "Laptop Pro" only comes with "quiet click" switches, which are dampened tactiles. These are essentially improved simplified Alps switches, so the housings can be opened without desoldering in order to swap the guts to linear or clicky.

What switches did you use previously? I can't think of anything that I have ever heard of that functions exactly the way that you describe.


foam bottom, hall effect, and just about every version of PC keyboard you can think of from Sperry-Rand to Das Keyboard. I've currently settled on Cherry MX silent red but Matias sound's better. (I'll see what they have to say.

Thanks for the conversation. It's serving me well to clarify the difference between want and need.

Foam and foil switches were prolific throughout the 80s, and few people really like them so it is cheap to acquire boards that contain them. The major downside with that is the foam breaks down with age. You can refurbish foam and foil switches, if you think those would fit the bill. There are videos on doing so on Youtube. The only (probably) Hall effect board I ever felt just felt like a nondescript linear switch (I never caught the details of that board). There are some being recreated now. I'll probably pick up some of the Silo Hall effect switches, if they ever come out and somebody makes a good board for them.

Have you tried Topre? Those also technically have two springs. One conical coil spring and a rubber dome. They're a favorite of some tactile aficionados. Personally, I just see them as really nice rubber domes.

As far as conversation goes, any time. I hope you find something that works for you. You may want to watch some of Chryos' videos on Youtube. He goes over a lot of switch types in detail. Mostly old ones, but most new switches are just MX and clones.