Today I have a pretty interesting board to show you all. Despite focusing on Cherry keyboards, there are times where other keyboards pique my interest just because they look cool and are french, this was one of them. (And also out of chauvinism, the address written on the back is less than 40km away from where I live !)
I purchased it thinking it would be Rafi RS76 of some kind, considering the very distinctive shape of the keycap, but I was very weirded out by what I found, I had never seen anything of the sort. And throughout disassembling the keyboard, I got more and more confused. and when I was finally at the bottom of it, I was still as clueless as to who it was made by. In fact the only marking on the pcb reads "soldering"
But, hell ! I was very excited by what kind of switch it was ! I have never had a Mag Sep board prior to this, so I was really excited that such a purchase ended up being something new and something I always thought was cool.The keycaps are still the ones made by/for Rafi, they just have an adpater in the stem receptacle. They are white on brown doubleshots, with a few tripleshots.
Now the negative : it feels so damn bad, it's horribly bindy, it binds to hell and back. It's also pretty scratchy.
I was pretty unhappy about the keyfeel, but well, I didn't plan on using it anyway so I thought it was fine. Still, I was curious and from my observation of the switch, I thought it was pretty obvious what the problem was : the stem was too long and too tight in the housing, so lube should actually greatly improve the feeling of the switch and it did ! It felt so much better on the lone switch I tried it on. I'm not going to do the rest but, now I know
One last thing, this is the very same switch that's used in the Minitel albeit membrane-based, also made by Telic Alcatel. So, lube your minitel if they feel terrible
And so I present to you the Telic Alcatel Clavier 252 from March 1985 with Magnet Seperation switches and Doubleshot or Tripleshot Rafi keycaps ! Here are the pictures :
DSCF3124 by Myoth, sur Flickr
DSCF3103 by Myoth, sur Flickr
DSCF3104 by Myoth, sur Flickr
DSCF3119 by Myoth, sur Flickr
DSCF3105 by Myoth, sur Flickr
DSCF3117 by Myoth, sur Flickr
DSCF3128 by Myoth, sur Flickr
DSCF3102 by Myoth, sur Flickr
DSCF3076 by Myoth, sur Flickr
DSCF3099 by Myoth, sur Flickr
DSCF3097 by Myoth, sur Flickr
DSCF3092 by Myoth, sur Flickr
DSCF3086 by Myoth, sur Flickr
DSCF3090 by Myoth, sur Flickr
DSCF3089 by Myoth, sur Flickr
DSCF3088 by Myoth, sur Flickr
DSCF3084 by Myoth, sur Flickr
DSCF3083 by Myoth, sur Flickr
DSCF3085 by Myoth, sur Flickr
DSCF3079 by Myoth, sur Flickr