Converting Cherry Board to ALPS?

[SmallFry]

The other night on the IRC, I don't remember who, but someone thought it would be a handy idea to have a Cherry board converted to ALPS. Are they the same holes or would a new PCB need to be designed? I would love this as ALPS boards are my favorites. Might make me take my extra donor board off the classifieds...Either way, a new PCB isn't too hard it just requires time and patience.

[Arcanius]

The mounting hole are different, so you'd need a new PCB, but make sure the matrix remains the same. Also, the debouncing time for ALPS is longer than Cherry switches, so your controller may pick up some chatter from the ALPS switches.

[Pylon]

The mounting holes are a lot different, and the plate is also likely different. You also need to change out the caps obviously, and like Arcanius brought up bounce characteristics are different. Overall not a good idea.

[theferenc]

I don't really see much point in it. You can get yourself a Zero and swap out the switches if you want a Filco with complicated white alps, for instance.

The only keyboard I could see this being useful for is something like the Poker. But at that point, it may be easier and less expensive to just design your own keyboard, and steal a controller from something like a siig.

On second thought...using the Poker case would still be useful. But we're getting pretty pricey at this point.

[Findecanor]

The pins and the plates are different.

To get yourself an ALPS keyboard with HHKB/Poker-like or Tenkeyless layout, it would be much easier to take a "full-sized" ALPS keyboard such as a Dell AT101W or some vintage Apple keyboard, cut off the pieces you don't need, add some wires to regain a full working matrix and then connect a custom controller to it.
I saw about a year ago, an Asian guy did just this with an Apple Extended Keyboard II and an Aikon controller.. I'll see if I can find the thread...