Cherry mx orange and yellow?

[Saf_Rimons]

So I was bored and started looking for cherry mx switches by color and stumbled across this page:

http://deskthority.net/wiki/Hirose_Cherry_MX_Orange

I looked up the keyboard in the pictures and couldn't find much about it besides it's name, the NCR F020. I also stumbled across this photo of cherry mx switches on imgur:



There are the yellows. The Deskthority page says they are both linear. My question is: where did they go and where could I possibly find them? I'm really interested in all the possibilities and customization mechanical keyboards has to offer so I can't let these switches go until I get my hands on them and test them (hopefully). Any information will be helpful, thanks.

[Puddsy]

There are a whole bunch of different switches that are pretty rare. Dark blues, ergo clears (cherry made, not custom), and vintage whites (the ones with the 55g spring) to name a few.

[jacobolus]

Note, you put an imgur webpage into an 'img' tag; you need to link the image directly:


Also, if anyone has Alps-mount MX switches, I would love to buy a few.

Also, I’m not sure what the original source of that image is, and I can’t remember where I’ve seen it before, but this page that includes it is quite interesting:
http://www.dogdrip.net/49990006

Oh here: http://deskthority.net/photos-f62/yab8433408-s-cherry-switches-t2149.html

[Saf_Rimons]

Yeah on that website there are even more examples of rare switches. The issue is: where can I find them? I would really love to play around with some of the other possibilities and feels. All the different feels.

Also: Here is another image from that page with more variants.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

My question is: where did they go and where could I possibly find them?

The types called "Hirose Cherry MX …" were made by Hirose Cherry Precision (AKA "Cherry Japan") in Japan.

Nobody knows how this started. The early Cherry switches (M5, M6, M7, M8 etc) had various keycap mount options, and Hirose's own M8 switches had a different mount again. When the MX series was introduced, the Hirose version (originally branded "HCP" instead of "CHERRY") continued to use the same keycap mount as found on Hirose Cherry M8 switches, instead of the new MX mount.

I've contacted Hirose (now HST — Hirose Sensing Technology) to find out anything I could about their switches, and they've seemingly not found anyone willing or able to tell me anything at all; that proved to be a dead end.

It has been claimed that the earliest MX switches were not colour-coded, which might account for some of the clear switches in the pictures: they're just really old switches before Cherry started adding dye to the plastic for visual recognition purposes. (This has never been proven and photographic evidence is still notably absent, as are all the relevant Cherry catalogues that would indicate when switch colour was introduced.)

The rest of the variants (Alps mount, yellow etc) are a mystery, as the chap who took those pictures (Brother Dragon, with an impossible-to-remember forum name) has never knowingly cited the source of any of his switches; they might be one-off production runs or product samples. I've found proof that Cherry allocated country-specific part number sub-series that might have been used for some of these, but no actual codes. Only the Hirose switches are known to have been used in production.

It would be nice if a fluent Chinese and English speaker could talk to Brother Dragon and find out more, as attempts to communicate with him via Google Translate have all failed miserably. There's a lot that we could learn from the Chinese-speaking community; we just need people who speak good Chinese and English to talk to some of these guys and find out more about what they know. I've learned a few things from alps.tw via Google Translate, but it's a real headache.

[Saf_Rimons]

My question is: where did they go and where could I possibly find them?

The types called "Hirose Cherry MX …" were made by Hirose Cherry Precision (AKA "Cherry Japan") in Japan.

Nobody knows how this started. The early Cherry switches (M5, M6, M7, M8 etc) had various keycap mount options, and Hirose's own M8 switches had a different mount again. When the MX series was introduced, the Hirose version (originally branded "HCP" instead of "CHERRY") continued to use the same keycap mount as found on Hirose Cherry M8 switches, instead of the new MX mount.

I've contacted Hirose (now HST — Hirose Sensing Technology) to find out anything I could about their switches, and they've seemingly not found anyone willing or able to tell me anything at all; that proved to be a dead end.

It has been claimed that the earliest MX switches were not colour-coded, which might account for some of the clear switches in the pictures: they're just really old switches before Cherry started adding dye to the plastic for visual recognition purposes. (This has never been proven and photographic evidence is still notably absent, as are all the relevant Cherry catalogues that would indicate when switch colour was introduced.)

The rest of the variants (Alps mount, yellow etc) are a mystery, as the chap who took those pictures (Brother Dragon, with an impossible-to-remember forum name) has never knowingly cited the source of any of his switches; they might be one-off production runs or product samples. I've found proof that Cherry allocated country-specific part number sub-series that might have been used for some of these, but no actual codes. Only the Hirose switches are known to have been used in production.

It would be nice if a fluent Chinese and English speaker could talk to Brother Dragon and find out more, as attempts to communicate with him via Google Translate have all failed miserably. There's a lot that we could learn from the Chinese-speaking community; we just need people who speak good Chinese and English to talk to some of these guys and find out more about what they know. I've learned a few things from alps.tw via Google Translate, but it's a real headache.

I really want to get my hands on them but it seems that they aren't actually there in enough quantity. I could probably achieve the same effect of some of the switches by changing springs and such but that will be a huge hassle when the time comes. Thanks for all the information though!

[0100010]

Don't forget the Nixdorf Cherry switches that had clear tops :