Early IBM Japanese Keyboard

[SCTony]

Wow. I wonder if they call it Godzilla. Beam spring? Buckling? It would be awesome to see someone speed-typing on this monster.

   http://www.flickr.com/photos/pengin/340943701/

[msiegel]

wow... 18 * 12 = 216 keys in the main block

[lowpoly]

[ch_123]

Looks like a Beam Spring one alright. Now that would be one hell of a mod project...

[quadibloc]

There's another picture of the same keyboard here,

http://www.usermode.org/photos/munich2008/p34.jpg

on the page

http://www.usermode.org/photos/munich2008/photos.html

A book about Chinese and Japanese computing has a diagram of this keyboard,which it refers to as belonging to the IBM 5255, but elsewhere it seems to belong to the IBM 3278 model 52, and the IBM 5924 keypunch is said to have had a similar keyboard (and there was even a Kanji version of the IBM 29 keypunch, which may have had 12 or 15 shifts per key).

[timw4mail]

That must be what they had to use before IME's and direct kana entry. From what I understand, each key on that would have a kanji radical.

[quadibloc]

From what I understand, each key on that would have a kanji radical.

Actually, each key just has 12 kanji characters.

The kind of Chinese typewriter where you have a tray of type elements, and bring a mechanical arm with a key on it over the character you wish to type, and then press the key to pick up that type slug and print with it, was actually originally invented in Japan by Sugimoto.

For Japanese, a single tray of characters sufficed - even before the Ministry of Education reforms, which limited the official set of Kanji used with Japanese to a little over 850 characters.

For Chinese, though, a typewriter like that is of limited use without a second tray for less-common characters. That's one reason why this type of keyboard was considered an option for Japanese, but was generally neglected as an option for Chinese.

[chimera15]

That would be awesome for helping to learn kanji.  Is it an xt or an at or something else I guess?  Would it still work with a modern computer I wonder with some kind of adapter?

[ch_123]

Hah, how I wish... Unfortunately, juding by that hefty parallel connector and it's age, it's probably a computer-specific protocol.

It looks like a Japanese 3278 terminal equivalent... More than likely Beam Spring judging from the shape and the keycaps.

[microsoft windows]

I wonder if it's compatible with a normal 3278 terminal.

[ch_123]

If the 3278s supported those characters, they wouldn't need their own special terminal with their own special keyboard, would they? =P

[quadibloc]

It looks like a Japanese 3278 terminal equivalent...

Yes, exactly. Given that later IBM keyboards in Japan used ALPS switches instead of buckling springs, I wouldn't want to speculate on what switch it might use. An earlier Japanese keyboard of this type was designed by IBM in the city of Toronto, in the province of Ontario right here in Canada... but this one was designed in the city of Raleigh, so it could well have used the same beam springs as the regular 3278 keyboard.

[ch_123]

IBM's Japanese boards from 1990 till about 1994 or so used buckling springs, but most of them weren't of the same type as the American ones (had an entry about this in the IBM Wiki, but I deleted it by accident and haven't gotten around to rewriting it)

The keycaps and the overall shape look very similar to those on contemporary US terminals, thus why I suspect it's probably a Beam Spring board.

[quadibloc]

wow... 18 * 12 = 216 keys in the main block

Yet I believe this board is Chinese and not Japanese. Of course they abandoned this design of sprawling boards

While that was a Japanese keyboard, IBM did also make a Chinese version of this keyboard. I have come across the my copy of the September 1989 issue of Cosmorama (number 399) which has a picture of it.

However, it differs from the Japanese version in a few ways.

The keys are narrower; they only have the 12 characters on them, not the additional space at the left for a white-on-blue Kana character indicating the alphabetical order of the characters.

There are more of them: 16 rows of 30 characters, for 480 keys rather than 216 in the main area.

EDIT: This may be a Chinese keyboard of a similar type, but not actually for the same equipment, or even by IBM.

[itlnstln]

Does it have NKRO?

[microsoft windows]

There's a reason why QWERTY was so successful.

[sethstorm]

Does it have NKRO?

I'd think that NKRO at this point would be a hindrance, not a benefit.

If that's the scale I think it is, you'd have up to 20 keys firing at once.

[ricercar]

up to 20 keys firing at once.

Child's play.

[microsoft windows]

I would never allow a dead cat in my house!

[ch_123]

Apologies for digging this thing out of the grave, but I stumbled across mention of a Chinese IBM Multistation keyboard with 254 keys, which I'm pretty sure this unit is. That would make this the IBM Japan 5556-005, and it would probably have linear Alps keys.

It should be noted that there were Japanese versions of the beam spring and Model F keyboards of the various IBM 3270 terminal models, meaning that this is unlikely to be an early Japanese terminal keyboard (IBM used to sell separate versions of Japanese keyboards - one would be Katakana and one would be Hiragana. Each of these alphabets only have 46 letters each, meaning that they could be squeezed onto a keyboard designed for a European language)