deskthority

Odd finds, got this for $10 from a guy found it from his company's spare parts storage. The cable is cut, no ideas what it could be. Heavily yellowed and worn out, shiny as fuck keycaps. Big logo MX Clear switches.

Off the dust, this photo is not accurate about the color, infact it's more yellowed. It is also weird to me that it has UK ISO layout with 1x control and alt. keys, the spacebar is still 7x though, and also a B-profile "-" keycaps shown up in numrow, no ideas if it was a manufacturing fault or for some purpose



Keycaps off



Switches shot





With the FACIT logo





Spacebar switch is tactile grey, first time to try it, holy sh*t that's heavy



Top right label



Bottom shell out:



Cherry made



no ideas what this is



Nametag )





FACIT label on the back

Interesting layout

Those 1x control and alt look so weird!

I didn't realise MX Clear was that old. (Keyboard is from 1990, and clears go back to 1989 apparently. How anyone knows that, I have no idea.)

The switches look a little yellowed or is it just me

HAD, and yet it's UK ISO? Weird!

Come DT awards, I'm going to nominate this keyboard for the most pointless layout of the year!

photekq wrote: ↑HAD, and yet it's UK ISO? Weird!

that's the thing that confused me


Also, here's the B-profile "-" keycaps I talked about, still a myth why they do this

I'll tell you, in Italian layout "-" key is on the left of the shift, so it's rightfully in B profile. Legends are identical, so maybe it's just a mistake and some guy at Cherry mixed that keycap from the italian set with the rest of the UK keys. Or maybe Cherry had too many italian keys and wanted to get rid of those by making frankenboards – like the Cherry Olivetti I once found.

Edit: indeed that frankenboard was made in 1990 too. Just a coincidence?

Now that explains much to me

Where do you guys get the 1990 from the keyboard? I'm still kinda new to these old Cherry stuffs )

Daniel Beardsmore wrote: ↑I didn't realise MX Clear was that old. (Keyboard is from 1990, and clears go back to 1989 apparently. How anyone knows that, I have no idea.)

Cherry has applied for FCC ID and it has passed on April 25, 1989.
If the switch is the same, it will mean that Cherry MX Clear had already existed in 1989.

Since it is machine translation, the meaning may be different. I am sorry.

The little red switch is for XT / AT selection, so the cable originally had a din5 connector. To get it working again you could also use a PS/2 cable as I generally do this a lot on my older keyboards that come with a din5 as I don't like using adapter if it's not really necessary. Most of the time I also remove the little switch and set it up permanently in AT mode. It should be an easy fix to get it working again with cable replace and have nice nkro G80 model after a good deyellowing bath.
I've seen another version of this one... but on the bottom row there was spots for more switches and they had used block spacers like on the 2000 series for unpopulated switch position.

rzwv: if that is an MX Clear switch (and not an early [wiki]Cherry MX White[/wiki], which were clear), it only confirms that the switch existed in 1989, not that it was introduced in 1989.

Apparently the Type B MX White (clear stem, clear click collar, 50 cN, reported to feel the same as MX blue) was apparently also introduced in 1989! Someone recently said that all Cherry MX switches were clear originally, so maybe Cherry gradually started adding coloured dyes to help tell them apart.

What's interesting is that Hirose Cherry in Japan was using coloured dyes around 1985 or so.

Click type switch always had the cam nib on left of stem as far as I know so they shouldn't be white. I think tactile clears first came in around 88/89.
white/clear click original predates blue which seem to come in 86/87. Prior to 86 there were clear/white linears as well which seemed to have co-existed with black since 84 when MX were introduced. Some seem to be slightly lighter, but not so much as reds while others seem to have not difference from black.

that's incredibly interesting, thanks for sharing bazh!

a lot of odd, odd, odd things going on here..very interesting

IvanIvanovich wrote: ↑Click type switch always had the cam nib on left of stem as far as I know so they shouldn't be white. I think tactile clears first came in around 88/89.

I am not sure that I'm young enough to live to see the day when all this stuff gets documented on the wiki.

IvanIvanovich wrote: ↑The little red switch is for XT / AT selection, so the cable originally had a din5 connector. To get it working again you could also use a PS/2 cable as I generally do this a lot on my older keyboards that come with a din5 as I don't like using adapter if it's not really necessary. Most of the time I also remove the little switch and set it up permanently in AT mode. It should be an easy fix to get it working again with cable replace and have nice nkro G80 model after a good deyellowing bath.
I've seen another version of this one... but on the bottom row there was spots for more switches and they had used block spacers like on the 2000 series for unpopulated switch position.

yeah I noticed on the back of the pcb there were some switch spots hidden by the case, including a spot for 2.25x left shift key too

Facit was a Swedish company who made mostly mechanical adding machines and typewriters. I didn't think I would see a computer keyboard from them, even a computer keyboard in British layout.

The B-row -_ key is on the /? key's position in both German and Swedish layouts, as well as in most other European layouts.