What's the deal with RS6000 LPFs / LPFKs?

[micrex22]

These have been brought up briefly before in listing, they're made by ALPS from what I read. Alan-Computech is selling them under two different listings, and I don't know what the difference is:
#1
http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-RS6000-LPF- ... Sw9r1V76zy
#2
http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-RS6000-LPF- ... SwQTVV77F6

They have a handful of other items listed in this peculiar fashion, and I haven't found a true difference when ordering from them. So your guess is as good as mine.

Brutman had a quick writeup on the purpose of these external keyboards, and that they're for CAD (which makes sense, there's also some ancient 3D mice that would be paired with these as well-- unlike the spaceballs developed by Labtec and hijacked by Logitech-- the IBM ones had complete spheres on a curved grid):
http://www.brutman.com/IBM_LPFK/IBM_LPFK.html

They operate on serial, which is cool; however it appears that the LED lighting is not very flexible to manipulate, and the requirement of an external power supply seems bulky / unnecessary / irritating. And because not everyone has a serial port (my "desktop" does --- but that's only because it's a server), it would be far more realistic to convert to USB, and then just have the LEDs powered off the USB bus; which would omit the aforementioned inconveniences and allow flexible control over the LEDs.

A guy in Japan did a quick video of one (but it wasn't connected to anything):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-d8U4kkVjQ

---

I do think they could be fashioned into some fairly unique external controllers (useful if you're in the same situation as me where you prefer tenkeyless but sometimes use Blender) , an external controller like this could be handy. A few things that could be done:
#1 when a key is pressed the LED could light up and upon depression, it turns off again
#2 if the controller detects an inactivity of say 5 minutes, it could then begin a light show of cycling through its LEDs | I can almost guarantee these LEDs don't support fading however
#3 different active light templates (which keys are lit up) could be assigned

My only major complaint is that the 6x6 matrix omits each corner key. I guess switches could be drilled through each corner and added in manually (like miniature arcade buttons or something).

[Halvar]

I have two of the LPFKs (beige though) and they're rubber dome. Which might or might not be the difference between the two listings...

[jacobolus]

> IBM ones had complete spheres on a curved grid

Can you link to a picture of what you’re talking about here?

[Tehrasha]

> IBM ones had complete spheres on a curved grid

Can you link to a picture of what you’re talking about here?

I believe he is referring to the IBM branded Spaceball 2003 that was used on RS6000 series graphics stations.

[micrex22]

> IBM ones had complete spheres on a curved grid

Can you link to a picture of what you’re talking about here?

I believe he is referring to the IBM branded Spaceball 2003 that was used on RS6000 series graphics stations.

That would be it--although I've never seen that 'promotional' variant before, they're usually beige.

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