Triumph Adler SE 505 - Cherry MX Adapter

[guidemetothelight]

Hello everyone,

since discovering my love for mechanical keyboards a while ago , especially vintage ones and noticing that vintage keebs with the "enthusiast" well known switches like vint cherrys or alps are quite expensive and rare to come by, escpecially in southern germany where iam from, i started looking for alternatives. more precise, vintage electrical typewriters.

Iam currently in the process of compiling an archive with images of said typewriter with their keycaps pulled of, to have reference in the future when looking for ones that can be harvested for keycaps and switches, since they are electrical waste anyway.

If there is interest in that, i might share it in the future.

But lets get to the title of this post. I recently struck " gold", i found a listing online, for a triumph-adler typewriter , after asking the seller to send my some pics with the keycaps pulled of, i noticed the cherry branding on the very mx looking switches.

I bought it sight unseen for 15 euros including shipping.

the machine and package were quite big.

after pulling it out, i noticed the very poor condition of the whole machine , which wouldnt be a problem though, since iam only planning to keep the "keyboard" part of the whole machine.


after unscrewing two screws in the bottom and prying a bit i finally got the keyboard pcb with plate and everything out.
quite dirty, but nothing compressed air , and later some isopropal cant fix.


After removing all of the keycaps to wash them in the washing machine, and going outside to blow away the years of dust , hair and debris the board / pcb looked to be in ok condition , i hope it still works , even though i have no idea if i wanna / can use it in the future.


looking closer at the switches, i noticed that the stems where quite unfamiliar, after some googeling i found out that they are probably [wiki]wiki/Cherry_MX-M8_Adapter[/wiki].



Since i want to be able to use the switches and keycaps some day , i dont know what the best way is of doing so , since iam quite new to the hobby. Should i desolder all of them and but them in a mx compatible keyboard , or can i somehow use the existing pcb and get it to work with usb ? i dont know what type of cable / connector that is and how i can read the signal coming from it. i have some basic knowledge of electronics and i know how to solder and have a decent soldering iron.

Any help , Infos or just Feedback is greatly appreciated ,

bye & happy typing !

Nick

[kbdfr]

Nice!

There already is a wiki page about Triumph-Adler, which is almost exclusively about typewriters and lists many of them, some with more detailed info:
wiki/Triumph-Adler
Would be nice if you could add yours (obviously a SE 505) to the list, and of course link your thread there.

Plus: I think it would be a good idea for easier later reference to edit the title of this thread and specify what "something cool" is in this case.
But of course you own your own posts

[guidemetothelight]

Nice!

There already is a wiki page about Triumph-Adler, which is almost exclusively about typewriters and lists many of them, some with more detailed info:
wiki/Triumph-Adler
Would be nice if you could add yours (obviously a SE 505) to the list, and of course link your thread there.

Plus: I think it would be a good idea for easier later reference to edit the title of this thread and specify what "something cool" is in this case.
But of course you own your own posts

hey man , will do !
yeah triumph-adler is a big one in germany , but we have so many more manufacturers , many of them were producing typewriters with cherry / alps switches , sadly only a few models had them and documentation is pretty bad.
a lot of Canon models had alps for example. i will add it later to the triumph adler page.

Happy Typing !

[mmm]

Since i want to be able to use the switches and keycaps some day , i dont know what the best way is of doing so , since iam quite new to the hobby. Should i desolder all of them and but them in a mx compatible keyboard , or can i somehow use the existing pcb and get it to work with usb ? i dont know what type of cable / connector that is and how i can read the signal coming from it. i have some basic knowledge of electronics and i know how to solder and have a decent soldering iron.

Usually these kinds of keyboard modules tend to be "brainless" and are connected to the mainboard of the typewriter with a ribbon cable of some sorts. If this is the case, you may be able to identify which wires correspond to rows and columns, and wire them up to a development board of some sorts, write the configuration, and then you possibly have a functioning keyboard. You can write the keymap by decoding the physical matrix layout from the pcb, but you can also reverse-engineer it by assigning it to an arbitrary matrix and correcting it. It is not too dissimilar to handwiring, but I expect there are better guides out there for your case. If you dig around in the workshop category there are loads of people who have made similar projects which you might be able to get inspiration from.

It is also possible to reuse the switches/keycaps in another project. If you want to handwire, you may be able to reuse everything (except the pcb), given the stabilizers are plate mount. If you want something completely different you can reuse the switches, but possible only partly the keycaps, as they do not fit any "modern" layouts. Buying an existing modern PCB is definitely easier, but requires additional keycaps, plate and the PCB itself.

Lots of possibilities. The more you reuse of the existing hardware, the more tinkering there is. Work, surely. Fun, possibly!

[guidemetothelight]

It is also possible to reuse the switches/keycaps in another project. If you want to handwire, you may be able to reuse everything (except the pcb), given the stabilizers are plate mount. If you want something completely different you can reuse the switches, but possible only partly the keycaps, as they do not fit any "modern" layouts. Buying an existing modern PCB is definitely easier, but requires additional keycaps, plate and the PCB itself.

Lots of possibilities. The more you reuse of the existing hardware, the more tinkering there is. Work, surely. Fun, possibly!

first of all, thank u so much for ur detailed comment ! Probably the route i wanna go is the one where i ditch the pcb , keeb everything else and just try to handwire the damn thing. It will be a lot of work but i just would love to have the keyboard work 100 percent and just put it i some sort of milled out aluminium case ( friend of mine´s father does own a huge industrial CNC machine.

again , thank u for ur time reading and replying ,

Good days & Happy typing !

Nick