deskthority

Why hello Deskthority, today I have a Honeywell Micro Switch keyboard for you. This keyboard has switches that I can not seem to identify anywhere. This is also my first post here, and before I begin with all of the photos, I think some back story would be useful. This will also serve as my introduction post, so it might be insanely boring, for someone only looking for the pictures.

SO without further ado here is my Vintage Honeywell Micro Switch Keyboard.








The last picture was the PCB when I took the board out of the enclosure last week, and this picture is one I took when I first had the board:



Based on the spaghetti wiring, and the soldering, my guess is that this was either a home built board, or down the line was modified, or something. The main thing of interest are the switches. They say Micro USA on the top, and the keycaps appear very similar if not identical to the other Honeywell caps, yet they do not appear anything like other Honeywell switches that I have found here or elsewhere:




One observation that I have made about the keycaps are the slots in the plastic for those metal stems. Some of the keycaps have 2 slots in them some have 1. In most of the Honeywell Micro Switch caps I have seen posted here on DT have none of those slots. My guess is this is an earlier version of those switches. If someone can decipher the date code in one of the first images in the thread, I assume that would be helpful. The following will be the insides of the dominate switch on the board:




There are multiple different model switches on the board. The most common switch is the 7030 7A1MS. I have not yet desoldered all of the switches on the board to check, but I have found 2 other models (not in the usual places, the space bar was the same as most of the alphas etc.) 7026 7A1MT and 7120 7A1MS. I only noticed these other switches as I was sorting my photos in Lightroom, so I have a phone picture of the switches but nothing in depth. If there is interest I can do some testing on the other switches like I do with this one:
















I wanted to get some sort of measurement on the force required to actuate this switch. Since I do not have access to any expensive force measuring equipment, I went with the low cost but inaccurate route, in order to get some sort of benchmark for the switch. Yeah... I went for Ripsters Nickles. Take it for what you will, but its better then nothing:







So hooked up to my super high tech rig, consisting of a $10 helping hand, a Fluke Multimeter (testing for continuity), and some random alligator clips, it took 20 Nickles to get the switch to actuate. When those Nickles are then weighed on my super expensive, next gen, feature filled, generic kitchen scale, I get 3 and 1/2 oz. 3 and a half ounces converts to 99.2 grams. With the brand new math that I invented to compute this problem, I find that it is safe to round that to 100 grams.

I also felt that it was worthwhile to demonstrate how the actual switch works. I think it is pretty obvious but pictures and video are always fun:
Finally here are some photos of the keycaps:








I have a few more photos of the board and the switches and caps in the Full Imgur Album here: http://imgur.com/a/tgre2

There are probably tons of things that I am leaving out, and forgetting to mention, but I will add anything that I can remember. If you can't tell which I am only now noticing, I haven't really got a good photo showing the mounting system, but all the switches are "plate mounted" on a sort of rail system. As you can see in the first images of the switch, the 2 plastic pieces that the screws screw into, actually have a small lip on them. They actually hold the bottom part of the switch to the rail, and the "lid" on the switch also holds onto the top of the rail. They are then directly soldered into the PCB. I notice that compared to other Honeywell switches, these only have 2 pins on them, where as the others have 4. I am guessing that these are the switches 1 step before the Hall Effects switches that we see. They kept the same similar keycap design, and even added that bit of "backward compatibility" on some of their following key caps with that "stem slot"

So overall the switches feel incredible. There are perfectly linear and insanely smooth, They do require a decent amount of force and the actuation point is relatively further down in the press. I have really no clue what do do with this board. My thinking was eventually do desolder the switches that are left on the board and and wire them up and make like a makeshift mini board with a Teensy. I would prefer these awesome switches, and caps to go to waste, but in its current state I think it would be better off salvaged then restored. I don't plan on doing anything for a while so any suggestions or ideas would be great.

EDIT: Would like to add that this board also has 2 dummy switches on either side of the space bar switch. Heard that might be an important detail in dating this board.

Fantastic first post, Pyrelink, and a real gem of a keyboard. I'm the guy with the other, later Honeywell you mentioned. Yours is very different. The overall construction reminds me of one or two of HaTaa's many epic finds (he is the top dog par excellence when it comes to relics) and perhaps he and Dorkvader and others who know more about Micro Switch's earlier history will have the insight you are looking for. I think they'll be in for field day! Your keyboard could be very old indeed; in a good way. Hand wiring is a good sign it pre-dates mine by a long shot. As is the truly classic look.

The switches work via simple continuity? Hall Effect uses electromagnetism, so more than two pins are required. Differences abound.

Oh and welcome to DT. There's really not much to be bothered about regarding rules here. Just post as you like.

Muirium wrote:Fantastic first post, Pyrelink, and a real gem of a keyboard. I'm the guy with the other, later Honeywell you mentioned. Yours is very different. The overall construction reminds me of one or two of HaTaa's many epic finds (he is the top dog par excellence when it comes to relics) and perhaps he and Dorkvader and others who know more about Micro Switch's earlier history will have the insight you are looking for. I think they'll be in for field day! Your keyboard could be very old indeed; in a good way. Hand wiring is a good sign it pre-dates mine by a long shot. As is the truly classic look.

The switches work via simple continuity? Hall Effect uses electromagnetism, so more than two pins are required. Differences abound.

Oh and welcome to DT. There's really not much to be bothered about regarding rules here. Just post as you like.

Thanks for the feedback!

Very nice find and great pictures!
I guess you have figured out that these are Reed switches. They are indeed mostly found on very early keyboards. HaTaa posted about one here:
http://deskthority.net/keyboards-f2/mag ... t1596.html

Wow, awesome keyboard and photos! Nice deep blue/white colour scheme. It looks like a punch card keyboard.

What a pity those mysterious "bunch of people" screwed around with it.

Great post. Love the keyboard color scheme. Its inspiring me to look for treasure again:)

You have my sympathies about the additional damage that incurred due to your relative.

Magnetic reed switches are well-known, but has anyone seen a Micro Switch version before? I honestly can't remember whether these have come up before, as these less-common switch types are often not documented on the wiki. It probably won't be the first time they've been seen, but they're certainly highly unusual.

Only three magnetic reed switches documented so far:

http://deskthority.net/wiki/Category:Ma ... d_switches

The Alps one wasn't even correctly categorised, and until now didn't show up. I thought there were several more magnetic reed switches than the ones listed, but a search for "magnetic reed" indicates otherwise. So many discoveries come and go without being added to the wiki, and get forgotten just as quickly as they are discovered.

Hey I remember this!

I was doing some searching around online and I saw an imgur album withsome fuzzy pictures that looked like anew kind of microswitch keyswitch. I talked about it with HaaTa a little and someone (I think it was Parak) contacted the guy and he posted lots of new pictures, even one with disassembly! It was pretty awesome actually.

I never thought I'd run into that awesome person here!

For reference, I saw this album: http://imgur.com/a/I7hus and I beleive I was looking up clare pendar switches at the time.

---
To answer some of your questions:

Based on the spaghetti wiring, and the soldering, my guess is that this was either a home built board, or down the line was modified, or something. The main thing of interest are the switches. They say Micro USA on the top, and the keycaps appear very similar if not identical to the other Honeywell caps, yet they do not appear anything like other Honeywell switches that I have found here or elsewhere:

So the wiring is noticeable right away. Back in the day you could get KB assemblies and hand-wire them up to things. I think HaaTa has a keytronic reed keyboard hooked up to a tiny sinclair computer. But I think a lot of legitimate computers and devices came with keyboards and had to be hand wired. This is long before my time, but I think companies like honeywell (microswitch) would provide a KB unit and the company would figure out the best way to use it on their device. I think this isn't home-made, just hand-wired.

One observation that I have made about the keycaps are the slots in the plastic for those metal stems. Some of the keycaps have 2 slots in them some have 1. In most of the Honeywell Micro Switch caps I have seen posted here on DT have none of those slots. My guess is this is an earlier version of those switches. If someone can decipher the date code in one of the first images in the thread, I assume that would be helpful. The following will be the insides of the dominate switch on the board:

I always wondered about those slots. I have a lot of honeywell hall effect keyboards from the mid-to-late 1970's and they all have those slots. When I saw your pictures with the metal stems, I knew that's what they are for. Microswitch updated the stems at least once during the lifetime of the switch, I guess around 1979 to not include those.

You can see them in my pictures of my hall effect KB from 1977 post I did a while ago:
http://deskthority.net/photos-videos-f8 ... t5395.html?

There are multiple different model switches on the board. The most common switch is the 7030 7A1MS. I have not yet desoldered all of the switches on the board to check, but I have found 2 other models (not in the usual places, the space bar was the same as most of the alphas etc.) 7026 7A1MT and 7120 7A1MS. I only noticed these other switches as I was sorting my photos in Lightroom, so I have a phone picture of the switches but nothing in depth. If there is interest I can do some testing on the other switches like I do with this one:

Usually the different model numbers are for various weights or options (angled stems, etc.) I would guess the different numbered ones were originally under some of the special or different keys, but there's no way to know for sure, sometimes.

So hooked up to my super high tech rig, consisting of a $10 helping hand, a Fluke Multimeter (testing for continuity), and some random alligator clips, it took 20 Nickles to get the switch to actuate. When those Nickles are then weighed on my super expensive, next gen, feature filled, generic kitchen scale, I get 3 and 1/2 oz. 3 and a half ounces converts to 99.2 grams. With the brand new math that I invented to compute this problem, I find that it is safe to round that to 100 grams.

The coinage test is a good test to get a general feel of a keyswitch weight. I like the way you write and hope you stay

---
As to what to use the board for: You can desolder the switches and wire them up with diodes to a controller. (or go with the original PCB and 2KRO). If you can find or figure out a method to make those metal tabs, I'd be happy to give you some spare hall effect keycaps to replace the missing ones They wouldn't match, but they would work. I think that keeping the original frame and mounting rails is a good choice.

If there's any other questions you have, please post! I am glad you ended up making this post here.

Oh! one other thing: the layout is called "data entry" and was used frequently on IBM cardpunches.

pyrelink wrote:

Oooh... I just noticed that some of the white keys are triple-shot. Nice.

mr_a500 wrote:

pyrelink wrote:

Oooh... I just noticed that some of the white keys are triple-shot. Nice.

I think it's a trick of the light. In other pictures both legends appear black.

(otherwise I'd have asked for pictures of the undersides. I love microswitch tripleshots and they are done in a completely different way than IBM)

I think you're right. I saw that in another photo they were all black, but thought that you couldn't see the difference between black and dark blue because of the contrast. Now that I've examined all the photos, I can see that they're just black.

They're still very nice keycaps though.

dorkvader wrote:Hey I remember this!

I was doing some searching around online and I saw an imgur album withsome fuzzy pictures that looked like anew kind of microswitch keyswitch. I talked about it with HaaTa a little and someone (I think it was Parak) contacted the guy and he posted lots of new pictures, even one with disassembly! It was pretty awesome actually.

I never thought I'd run into that awesome person here!

For reference, I saw this album: http://imgur.com/a/I7hus and I beleive I was looking up clare pendar switches at the time.

Yeah I remember HaTaa messaged me on Reddit after I posted about the Clare-Pendar board, and someone else pestered me about this board until I remembered to post . I am thinking of doing a post about the Clare-Pendar board here as well, since there are still a few things that interest me about those switches...

Also, I am not sure of what the date code on the label is, I am guessing its something like year and week. So the datecode being 7035, must mean this keyboard was made in the 70th week in 1735? Or is it more in depth including like production weeks or something else? And how does this compare age wise to some of the next renditions of the Micro Switch?

mr_a500 wrote:I think you're right. I saw that in another photo they were all black, but thought that you couldn't see the difference between black and dark blue because of the contrast. Now that I've examined all the photos, I can see that they're just black.

They're still very nice keycaps though.

Yeah I wish I had some triple shot caps, but sadly I just used my camera sorcery, to make those double shots appear triple shot.

35th week of 1970 makes sense. Early September?

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=35th+week+of+1970

It looks that old, anyway.

verrrrry nice board ! (and sad story..)

Awesome tear down! If only everyone could take pics and do analysis like you (me included ).

For historical purposes I'm going to list all the magnetic switch keyboards I know about (well ones I have pics of at least). There are a few more I know of, but can't remember where to find the pics or I still have yet to take pics.


GRI ASCII Keyboard


Maxi Switch 2900 Keypad


Harris EKA-9870


Aydin Controls
I believe this one uses the Clare Pendar switches (but I'm only basing upon the shape, there are not manufacturing marks other than MEXICO).


Alps CB14182B / SCB1A163


Siemens Tastatur 280 S 22241-F100-A12 GS 1
This one is probably the most unique reed switch I've seen.


Sony OA-S3400

I have at least 4 other reed switch based keyboards but no pics yet (still need to clean them ).

HaaTa wrote:Awesome tear down! If only everyone could take pics and do analysis like you (me included ).


Maxi Switch 2900 Keypad
I believe this one uses the Clare Pendar switches (but I'm only basing upon the shape, there are not manufacturing marks other than MEXICO).

Thanks! I am also going to make a guess and say that that keypad IS a Clare-Pendar keypad. Not for any scientific reason, but it looks a hell of a lot like my Clare-Pendar board, with that blue connector, and the diodes and resistors, and capacitors, etc. all on the same side as the switches. The PCB is that same color and the soldering job looks eerily familiar.

And you have far more keyboards then me, so switch teardown for each one would probably take some time .

Wait, I thought Clare-Pendar switches were metal leaf contact?

These: [wiki]USw LXBW01[/wiki]

Is there more than one type of switch associated with them?

Daniel Beardsmore wrote:Wait, I thought Clare-Pendar switches were metal leaf contact?

These: [wiki]USw LXBW01[/wiki]

Is there more than one type of switch associated with them?

That entry was written about my Clare-Pendar board actually. Clare-Pendar is a switch company and they made multiple types of switches. His keypad might not be a Clare-Pendar switch, I just figure it to be since the keypad bears a strong resemblance to my keyboard.

EDIT: looking at their product cataloge: PDF, It mentions reed switches, which are in that Maxi Switch Keypad, but the stems and the shape of the switch appear much more similar to my keyboard... IDK, HaaTa probably has it all figured out by now, but in either case I think I will go take apart and take some more photos of my Clare-Pendar board.

Bah, sorry all (and especially pyrelink). I screwed up the formatting.

The keypad, probably isn't Clare-Pendar. It's the Aydin Controls.



Compare to page 3 of http://www.visualux.com/catalogues/kswitch.pdf

HaaTa wrote:Bah, sorry all (and especially pyrelink). I screwed up the formatting.

The keypad, probably isn't Clare-Pendar. It's the Aydin Controls.



Compare to page 3 of http://www.visualux.com/catalogues/kswitch.pdf

Well then... That makes far more sense. The "Mexico" marking was vague enough to run with, connecting it to the rest of the switches, and companies. But those are definitely the same switches as seen in that PDF. Very very cool. And just like my Clare Pendar post, I went and reuploaded all the images of this Honeywell Micro Switch board to Flickr. No watermarks and anyone can use them for what ever if they want. I won't bother with watermarks or anything from now on. https://flic.kr/s/aHsjXmJNSK

(needed some Micro Switch related thread to post this)

Micro Switch appears to be one of the oldest computer keyboard switch makers. I just found this ad from the 1950's:
(unfortunately, this is the largest photo I can find and I don't know the exact year)

Most other switch makers didn't start until the late 60's/early 70's.

That is insanely cool.

I don't know why I didn't look carefully at the switches in this keyboard before. This is a strange version of the Micro Switch, maybe the original version before the "cage" with cylindrical slider with square mount. This keyboard is 35th week of 1970 - and HaaTa's is the 12th week of 1970, but his has the "newer" switch. (some overlap in the crossover?)

So, theoretically, Micro Switch went from the original version to the "cage" version in 1970 and from the "cage" to the irregular rectangle slider in 1977.

When you say cage, what exactly are you referring to? I am guessing you mean the mounting assembly?

I'm pretty sure he means the metall clips for the switch housing.

Hmm.. I missed this somehow. Yes, the metal clips (known as "naked cage" from seebart's Micro Switch thread ). After 1977, Micro Switch switches were mounted in a metal plate through square holes, instead of in a metal "cage" of clips, used before. This one seems to predate both designs.

I'd love to see this blue & white keyboard in a header. Do you have any more shots, pyrelink?

I have all of these photos (without the atrocious watermark) uploaded to Flickr, with a few extra shots not posted here. I could also dig it back out and snap some more photos if you would like.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/123564336 ... 166369703/

pyrelink wrote: ↑I have all of these photos (without the atrocious watermark) uploaded to Flickr, with a few extra shots not posted here. I could also dig it back out and snap some more photos if you would like.

I'll take a shot at a couple of headers with your pictures if you don't mind pyrelink.

Sure, feel free. Making headers out of some of my images has been on my "something I should really get to at some point in the future" list for a while now.

mr_a500 wrote: ↑I don't know why I didn't look carefully at the switches in this keyboard before. This is a strange version of the Micro Switch, maybe the original version before the "cage" with cylindrical slider with square mount. This keyboard is 35th week of 1970 - and HaaTa's is the 12th week of 1970, but his has the "newer" switch. (some overlap in the crossover?)

So, theoretically, Micro Switch went from the original version to the "cage" version in 1970 and from the "cage" to the irregular rectangle slider in 1977.

(quoting myself again...)

It looks like there was overlap going from the "cage" to the metal plate version too. I saw a 1979 keyboard that has the "cage". So you can get an estimate of Micro Switch keyboard age by the design, but there's room for error.