Restoring an old Apple SE Keyboard with Orange Alps

[Mooksie]

So I have an og macintosh se in the original box in my closet, today I decided to open up the box and I found the keyboard. Out of curiosity I popped off one of the caps and found some mechanical alps switches! I was excited so I disassembled it and cleaned the caps and case, as well as the plate and switches. Broke the side of the spacebar tho The switches feel linear, and still really smooth even though they're 29 yrs old.
Before:
Macintosh SE Keyboard by Noah Blalock (ig: @noahblalock), on Flickr

After:
Macintosh SE Keyboard by Noah Blalock (ig: @noahblalock), on Flickr
Macintosh SE Keyboard by Noah Blalock (ig: @noahblalock), on Flickr
Macintosh SE Keyboard 1986 by Noah Blalock (ig: @noahblalock), on Flickr

[chyros]

Orange Alps are tactile, but I supect they're much like black Alps in that they feel like a linear\tactile hybrid.

I'm not surprised the switches still feel smooth after all that time, Alps switches are really well designed in my experience and quite durable. Even if they go slightly wrong, they're easy to fix manually without desoldering them, too. Hope you like the switches - I've never tried orange Alps myself .

What I do know is the connection bit. Apple keyboards use a ADB connector - a proprietory connection that resembles, but is not compatible with, a P/S2 connector. The standard cable that came with it will have ADB on one end and P/S2 on the other. If you didn't get it with your keyboard, you might need to get one. It's also possible to get ADB to USB cables iirc, but I don't know details about that.

[jacobolus]

The [orange Alps] switches feel linear, and still really smooth even though they're 29 yrs old.

Orange Alps switches are usually pretty tactile, so if they truly feel linear, my suspicion is that at some point the keyboard was stored for a long period of time with all the keys held down (e.g. heavy stuff piled on it, or wrapped tightly in plastic), bending the metal tactile leaves a bit out of shape.

I have an issue though, it uses a proprietary connection instead of ps2 and I need an adapter of some sort to use it on my pc, any help would be appreciated.

The protocol is ADB (Apple Desktop Bus).

There are two reasonable solutions here: (1) buy a Griffin iMate adapter, which runs about $30, (2) buy yourself a little microcontroller board like a Teensy 2.0 ($20) or some Chinese Arduino Micro knockoff ($5–10) and build yourself an adapter, either internal to the keyboard or external, using hasu’s tmk_keyboard firmware on it. ADB connectors use the same physical shape as S-Video, so if you need parts, you can buy S-Video cables and jacks.

[jacobolus]

The standard cable that came with it will have ADB on one end and P/S2 on the other.

This is false.

[Firebolt1914]

Just wondering, on the first picture, were those stickers on the caps

[Mooksie]

Hebrew letters, I got it from a family friends when he left the states for israel.

[Mooksie]

So, is this keyboard worth anything or should I just desolder the switches and use them for future projects?

[jacobolus]

I think the keyboard is great (nice dyesub keycaps, good size, pretty sturdy construction), but do whatever you want. :-)

The keyboard isn’t worth much to sell, because there were at least a million of them produced.

[Mooksie]

Do alps switches all have the same solder points? Like can I desolder them and put them on a different pcb?

[Jotokun]

Yes, all genuine ALPS switches as well as most clones are pin compatible.

[Mooksie]

Ok cool, thanks.

[fohat.digs]

Do alps switches all have the same solder points? Like can I desolder them and put them on a different pcb?

There are people who really like small layout keyboards.

Perhaps you could trade or do something non-destructive.

[chyros]

The standard cable that came with it will have ADB on one end and P/S2 on the other.

This is false.

Oh yeah, of course, I forgot, it used that weird everything-in-serial-connection system. My bad! XD

[Daniel Beardsmore]

XT, AT, PS/2, and ADB are all serial buses. The key differences with ADB are that it supports both daisy chaining and hot-swapping (the latter is officially proscribed due to lack of surge protection in hardware — but it worked all the same). The IBM PS/2 was idiotic in that it stuck to the outdated notion of dedicated, single-device ports, and lacked a generic high-speed bus, something Acorn offered in 1981 (the 1 MHz Bus), and Apple in 1987 (SCSI), both daisy-chained so you could have more devices than you had ports.

You're probably thinking of the fact that the Mac never had a Centronics port — Macs didn't use parallel printers. Apple also gave you two serial ports so that you had one for the printer and one for a modem.

Ports on the Macintosh were sensible; it's PCs where you had to connect the scanner to the Zip drive, and the joystick to the sound card.

Mac ADB keyboards did have a weird implementation where you had one socket on either side, and each one could be upstream or downstream: you could connect either side to the computer, and the opposite side would become the downstream port (e.g. for the mouse), allowing your keyboard cable to be short and tidy and keep out of the way.

[Mooksie]

Change of plans. I came to the realization that I'll be without a decent kb for atleast 5 weeks(bought poker II with blues on MD and returned the Poseidon), so I pulled the Apple M0016 off ebay and ordered the ABD to USB converter for $20.