I wish :°(
All the stuff I desperately want to know, is mostly sunk like Atlantis. We did have breakthrough last year: HaaTa found some strange Cherry switches, which I put to my contact in ZF US (Ed Ferraton). He asked Germany, who recognised it as being similar to an M10, but they suspected it was fake. Ed had a rummage and found a data sheet for the M11, and that was it! Perfect match. So we assume M10 existed (as that's all Germany remembers), and we have physical proof of the M11. We saved the knowledge of two switches from complete extinction. However, we really are on the edge of losing every last trace of data from pre-MX now.
However, what would be exceptionally useful, is a copy of every Keyboards & Switches, and Switches & Keyboards catalogues that they have in their archives. I only have 1973, 1974, and 1982 as PDF.
Q: Are any Keyboards & Switches/Switches & Keyboards catalogues still kept on file at Cherry, and are Cherry able to officially release any of them to the community/wiki?I've tried Hirose directly and had no luck finding out anything about their M8 and MX switches, and we won't solve all of yab's custom batches (yellow, Alps mount, etc), but if we can fill in some of these intermediate years for their mainstream switch range, we may get M10 and M11 details, suggested start dates for known switches, a suggestion of what went on with MX White and MX Blue, and maybe even a clue as to when and why Cherry changed from M6 to M7 part numbers (no-one left at Cherry seems to have any idea).
OK, here's a really evil one — answer this and they can have a whole bag of gold stars:
http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=45470.0See that Cherry USA keyboard? That's a Cherry PCB, onto which is mounted a block of "praying hands" switches.
Q: Who made the "praying hands" monobloc switch assembly used in the Cherry USA–made DECwriter LA36(?) keyboard? (See URL above for details)
It may be the same company who made many other DEC keyboards of that design (e.g. DEC Gigi, VT100); I don't need to know why DEC had such a frankenboard constructed; I simply want to know who made the switch block. It will be either Hi-Tek Corporation or Stackpole Components Corporation; I'm trying to get manufacturer confirmations to strengthen my theory of how you differentiate the Hi-Tek and Stackpole versions of those early monobloc assemblies, so this would be another important data point.
(Edited to contain direct questions!)
