A gentle reminder to those who buy Cherry Corp keyboards

[berserkfan]

Would just like to share my experience. I have bought several Cherry keyboards and discovered one problem with them. If you buy cheap (aka on ebay, New old Stock, secondhand, vintage, etc.), the keyboard may not work perfectly on Win7.

Windows will still recognize it as a generic keyboard of course, but there are no proper drivers. Cherry's software won't recognize the keyboard, resulting in your extra or programmable keys being unprogrammable. And if you buy a keyboard with keys programmed by the last user, you may be stuck unless you install Cherry tools on an older computer and work from there.

I have a thread where I'm exploring how to fix this issue, http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=46185.

Will be exploring DaMorgue's suggestions when I have time on the weekend.

Here's a reply from Cherry's representative:
 The G80-8113 was produced on 2002 and the G80-8200 was produced on 2006.  They use old electronics (ie. Old firmware, old hardware) and design for the old Windows (eg. Win98)  and DOS applications.  They do not support Win7 or Cherry Designer software.  Please don’t try to modify  the keyboard firmware as it may cause the total malfunction of the keyboard.
 
 The old software ‘Configure 291’ is still available to download (ref. attached),  it was designed also for the old Windows and DOS.   I will not suggest you to use it in Win7.  This should be your own decision and responsibility if take the risk or not.
Website : http://www.cherry.de/cid/download.php?
1.      In product selection,  select ‘G80-195x’ 
2.      Select and download the “Cherry Configuration Software”

[dorkvader]

a word of warning, the cherry G80-1950 is crippled by horrible software, so if you are using the software for it, you may be disappointed anyway. It may be more expedient to just wire the matrix directly to a teensy++

[Masterchief79]

This only affects Cherry keyboards with programmable keys, right?

[oTurtlez]

This only affects Cherry keyboards with programmable keys, right?

Software programmable keys. Those of us with G80-3700's w/ Mode 4 are still fine

[funkymeeba]

This only affects Cherry keyboards with programmable keys, right?

This particular post does, but the pattern does not so much. The older Tipro MID modules, Birch POS units, and probably several others will have problems on newer systems. My Birch board was made in 1995 at the latest. The point is to take note of what software is available for your board before purchase. I, fortunately, managed to get the DOS software for Birch working on my board, but the newer, fuller-features stuff won't work with it at all.

Should we perhaps put up a Wiki article on programming some of the old POS boards? It could help some of our users with Tipro, Cherry, Birch, etc. boards.

[Masterchief79]

Just asking because I didn't have any problems with my Cherry boards on Win7 or even Win8, no matter the date. My oldest one is a G80-1000 from 1987 and it works like a charm. In fact, I never had any problem with any keyboards under any OS, just my Fake-Model-F has a prob when I type too fast.^^ But I suppose that's rather a hardware issue.

[dorkvader]

Just asking because I didn't have any problems with my Cherry boards on Win7 or even Win8, no matter the date. My oldest one is a G80-1000 from 1987 and it works like a charm. In fact, I never had any problem with any keyboards under any OS, just my Fake-Model-F has a prob when I type too fast.^^ But I suppose that's rather a hardware issue.

This affects the cherry software programmable keys. I remember having to run cherry software whenever I had my kb plugged in. Changing the volume or similar would give a little notification from cherry's software in the corner of the screen. These are the functions that have trouble working in modern OS's with some keyboards.

Older keyboards will work as they always have. USB does it's HID, PS/2 does it's interrupt thing, it's the same and still supported.

[berserkfan]

Just to clarify

When I said I had problems with Cherry keyboards not working with their Cherry software and windows7 not having drivers for them, it means their programmable keys either don't work, can't be programmed, can't be recognized as anything apart from a default generic keyboard, or can't be reprogrammed.

The standard 104 keys still work fine.

But then again, why would anyone buy a G80 with 136 keys unless he wanted to use the programming functions? (Or strip for parts?)

Just asking because I didn't have any problems with my Cherry boards on Win7 or even Win8, no matter the date. My oldest one is a G80-1000 from 1987 and it works like a charm. In fact, I never had any problem with any keyboards under any OS, just my Fake-Model-F has a prob when I type too fast.^^ But I suppose that's rather a hardware issue.

This affects the cherry software programmable keys. I remember having to run cherry software whenever I had my kb plugged in. Changing the volume or similar would give a little notification from cherry's software in the corner of the screen. These are the functions that have trouble working in modern OS's with some keyboards.

Older keyboards will work as they always have. USB does it's HID, PS/2 does it's interrupt thing, it's the same and still supported.