Random keyboards, lovingly photographed

[mr_a500]

Well, you knew what you were letting yourself in for, Mr.A500…

Holy shit! I leave for 1 hour and come back to 2 whole pages of shocking photos. All I can say is... more! MORE!

[HaaTa]

[HaaTa]

Well, you knew what you were letting yourself in for, Mr.A500…

Holy shit! I leave for 1 hour and come back to 2 whole pages of shocking photos. All I can say is... more! MORE!

And so far, no duplicate keyboards

[HaaTa]

[HaaTa]

[HaaTa]

[HaaTa]

[HaaTa]

[HaaTa]

[HaaTa]

[HaaTa]

[HaaTa]

[HaaTa]

[HaaTa]

[HaaTa]

[mr_a500]

And so far, no duplicate keyboards

Some photos aren't so "lovingly photographed" though - especially the ones with crud under the keys. Somehow I just can't feel the love when looking at crud.

This is an odd photo - outside with lawn chair. Is that one of those "summer cottage keyboards" for typing on down at the beach?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

(Funny how people are overanxious to post photos so long as they don't have to sign their soul over to the wiki devil.)

We have to actually know something about what we're posting. And in such a way as to fit the Wiki's taxonomy. Posting a picture, meanwhile, rushes straight to the bit we like to do!

These threads are awfully hard to find and keep track of ("I know I saw some photo of something somewhere …"), and have virtually zero useful information (basically "WTF is this I don't even", and this one is worse as most pictures are uncaptioned and deliberately unhelpful).

Couple that with all the "Please identify X" topics where I have to guess where I thought I saw something that might have looked like what I'm looking at but no-one ever wrote it up properly (at least I have MouseFan's work to fall back on).

If everyone just briefly documented everything they own ***SOMEWHERE*** at least we might have some sort of a clue.

How do we keep finding so many ways to avoid making real knowledge available to everyone?

[Muirium]

True.

Okay, I know this one: µTRON!

[Halvar]

This is an awesome thread, I love it! Especially HaaTa never ceases to amaze!

I agree with Daniel though that it would be so much more useful is there was a little caption with each picture designationg the keyboard. We have a forum search function, but it will find nothing in this thread.

[kint]

http://deskthority.net/photos-videos-f8 ... ml#p138165

this post, it's an HP keyboard but what switch has it?
Also: While I love to see all of the pics, I'm missing the artist touch in some of them.

[mr_a500]

(Funny how people are overanxious to post photos so long as they don't have to sign their soul over to the wiki devil.)

We have to actually know something about what we're posting. And in such a way as to fit the Wiki's taxonomy. Posting a picture, meanwhile, rushes straight to the bit we like to do!

These threads are awfully hard to find and keep track of ("I know I saw some photo of something somewhere …"), and have virtually zero useful information (basically "WTF is this I don't even", and this one is worse as most pictures are uncaptioned and deliberately unhelpful).

Couple that with all the "Please identify X" topics where I have to guess where I thought I saw something that might have looked like what I'm looking at but no-one ever wrote it up properly (at least I have MouseFan's work to fall back on).

If everyone just briefly documented everything they own ***SOMEWHERE*** at least we might have some sort of a clue.

How do we keep finding so many ways to avoid making real knowledge available to everyone?

The point of this thread is to just look at the beauty of keyboards. I think all of these keyboards already have their own breakdown threads, with switches identified. This is just for oogling.

(I know I should contribute to the wiki, but losing hundreds of posts and photos in the Geekhack disaster has made me wary of putting too much effort into websites.)

[7bit]

http://deskthority.net/photos-videos-f8 ... ml#p138165

this post, it's an HP keyboard but what switch has it?
Also: While I love to see all of the pics, I'm missing the artist touch in some of them.

Alps. I've typed a lot on this.

[002]

Here's a couple of pics of a Sony NEWS NWP-411A I took a little while ago:





And for those who don't browse the wiki too often, the MCRW-1000 keyboard:

[cookie]

[HaaTa]

So, one of the reasons I'm transitioning to Flickr is that you can click on the pictures and it will go to the album.

One of my own requirements for my albums is that it has at least a keyboard name of sorts. I need a good visualizer, but every keyboard in my Google+ and Flickr albums is marked in my spreadsheet (remember the crawler query?).

I'm always torn between documenting/locating old keyboards and actually trying to work on new keyboard related things (kishsaver controller, switches, etc.).

Yes, I could work tirelessly on the wiki like Beardsmore, but that would eat into all my other keyboard activities.
By now it should be pretty clear, I don't post that much on the forums. It's not that I'm not interested, it's just that I don't browse the forums that much anymore because I'm too busy tracking down a sense bug, chatting in IRC, or tracking down yet another undiscovered keyboard switch.

One of the big problems when I "rediscover" a keyboard switch is that I know absolutely nothing about it. It often takes hours of research to even get a company name. Some switches (Prototopre for example), I know nothing about other than they are very similar to Topre and were also made in Japan before Topre started making office equipment.

And while I do like being a keyboard historian, that's not why I'm still around and would have left keyboards in 2012. It may seem like I joke around about wanting an assistant, but I'm pretty serious about that. My "To Research" pile is enormous. Beardsmore has been tackling a lot of mysteries. Ironically, all the ones I wasn't all that interested in, but ended up to be quite interesting

I'm tired of only seeing Topre and Cherry in modern keyboards (thanks Matias!). Unicomp...well...I wouldn't call their keyboards "modern". I want this to change. Regardless of whether I have to do it all myself, I will introduce switch variance into the modern keyboard world.
And with a little luck, perhaps the ultimate keyboard switch.

(This was not a stab at anyone, just a rant about myself; please keep bugging me to do stuff, otherwise I'll never get it done )

[HaaTa]

http://deskthority.net/photos-videos-f8 ... ml#p138165

this post, it's an HP keyboard but what switch has it?
Also: While I love to see all of the pics, I'm missing the artist touch in some of them.

Alps. I've typed a lot on this.

That one is a Clicky Fujitsu Leaf Spring actually.

[tinnie]

Shit shit. I have these.

[Dubsgalore]

all MX here..still learning to use my camera

Cherry ESA-3000HASRO

I'm in love let me have it!

[tinnie]

ugh.

Spoiler:

[Dubsgalore]