Will sixty ever come back?

[Josh]

sixty!

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Now pretty much everything seems to be discovered and documented …

That's not even close to being true yet.

There's still a ton of mysteries surrounding the switches we do know of (I'm desperate to know who PED were: [wiki]PED keyswitch[/wiki]) but if you've seen only some of the discoveries since you left, you'd see that we're not close to the end level yet.

Some of them are just too insane to believe anyone could have conceived them, like HaaTa's [wiki]Collimation Optical Encoder[/wiki]. I doubt HaaTa's even done yet with revealing his acquisitions over the past year.

Then there's the overall insanity: just how many SMK linear clones are there, and why are they all so highly accurate compared to other clones? And can we prove that SMK designed the original switch, not NEC or Maxi Switch? Questions, questions, questions. The evidence that Montereys are SMK is closing in on 100% now, with, after all this time, proof that the Apple Keyboard II variant was SMK:

http://www.applerescueofdenver.com/prod ... -ii-parts/

(Another spring over membrane, there. My OK-100M is in fact progressive rate, which makes me wonder if any other spring-over-membrane switches with dual springs are progressive rate. What makes me more curious is that some designs such as SMK and Emerson only have one spring, even though membrane force that I've measured is 13–19 g — maybe single-spring designs have much thicker membranes to compensate? So much left to measure and learn.)

One of my favourites is discovering that someone seemed to have made on-the-sly [wiki]Apple hairpin spring[/wiki] switches:

http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=49015.0

Considering how poorly-regarded this switch is, what would be gained by having someone grind away the Apple logo and scratching in something else (within Apple's patent period, no less), instead of, oh, buying in a box of decent switches? Or did Apple actually sanction the defacement of their product?

Even with Alps, we're not done finding new switches, either SKCL/SKCM ("CM") or other families such as [wiki]Alps ultra low profile[/wiki], which is not only a dinky little contraption, but very hard to get your head around. Someone with CAD skillz needs to produce an exploded diagram of it, as it's more intricate than it appears. Like most discoveries, there only seems to be one left in the world; in this case, it's over on Sandy's island.

You probably missed the busting of my theory that MX means M10, since we now have proof of M11 and a strong case to believe in a similar M10 switch. So now we have: M5?, M6, M7, M8, M9, M10, M11, MX …

I have no reason to believe that there isn't a load more to come. Even when we've found every last switch, we will remain left with a huge heap of mysteries left to solve, and the wiki is still short of tons of images:

http://deskthority.net/wiki/Category:Pa ... lustration

There's enough work for years to come.

[HaaTa]

Some of them are just too insane to believe anyone could have conceived them, like HaaTa's [wiki]Collimation Optical Encoder[/wiki]. I doubt HaaTa's even done yet with revealing his acquisitions over the past year.

Just getting started
Every time I research patents for newly found keyboard switches, I find even crazier stuff to look forward too

If work stops bombarding me, I'll try to make at least one formal keyboard post this week.

[leesofi]

welcome back sixty

[t!ng]

Oh, yes I remember that shit with the RACE GB... I hope you have grown stronger out of this.

My favorite part :

"My eyes still twitch to every keyboard on TV, I still look out for rare stuff and I still recognize a Model M in the background of random voice calls... Not much changed there. I still do enjoy all of this a lot." - sixty

Cheers

[lowpoly]

Hi sixty.

[hoggy]

Sixty, nice to see you again!

[sixty]

Now that I have the chance, what keyboard(s) have you been using regularly since? I've always wondered about this, since it was assumed you had lost the interest.

In the last years I still only ever used the one board I used back then most of the time. It's an ancient Korean custom called "DK Saver":


Picture is old, I actually did not use RedAlert on it most of the time, as I prefer the thicker Cherry ABS keycaps.

Some years ago I also got my Phantom kit that I had entirely forgotten about. I assembled that around New Year's 2014. The DK is a nice and solid board, but recently one of the stabilizers broke and the aluminium is starting to do strange things... so for now I have retired the DK and I am using the Phantom as a daily driver. I am making use of some extra keys and I run it on hasu's firmware with mouse key support. I just added the Dolch (thanks mbc!) and I started to make extensive use of the extra keys, so I am pretty happy with it.


If anyone has spare GMK Dolch shift-keys and 1x1 modifiers... *hint hint nudge nudge*


As for switches... I never changed and I am still running nothing but vintage MX Blacks on all boards that I use.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

That shift key needs a white legend :-P

[sixty]

That shift key needs a white legend

Yeah white probably would be better. I would prefer to replace it entirely with a matching one though. Next best thing probably would be to use black modifiers. I'll see how that looks if I can't find a matching one.

[photekq]

Looking good. Always loved the look of the DK Saver. Nice and clean. How come you're using vintage blacks instead of your Nixdorfs - the ultimate linear MX?

[rindorbrot]

Sweet board sixty. That reminds me, I never really posted some good photos of my Phantom on here.
Gotta do that sometime...

What kind of stabilizers are you using? Cherry I'd guess?

[Daniel Beardsmore]

That shift key needs a white legend :-P

Yeah white probably would be better. I would prefer to replace it entirely with a matching one though. Next best thing probably would be to use black modifiers. I'll see how that looks if I can't find a matching one.

Sadly all my spare RGB keys are black legend, as I also realised that white legend would be better on a keyboard with white legends, and snapped up an ISO white legend kit.

[sixty]

Sweet board sixty. That reminds me, I never really posted some good photos of my Phantom on here.
Gotta do that sometime...

What kind of stabilizers are you using? Cherry I'd guess?

Yeah Cherry. I always preferred them for linear switches. I was actually gonna use Costar stabilizers for the Phantom build because I did not have any plate-mounted Cherry ones handy and I was too lazy to de-solder them. However, I never managed to fit the Costar stabs into the Phantom properly. Seemed like I would have had to sand the plate a bit. In the end I gave up and used Cherry ones from an old WYSE.

[guilleguillaume]

I hope everything is going great. I'ts nice to hear from you again and welcome back to your home

[Grond]

Sixty, will you revive Keyboardp0rn? That was a lovely website with great pics.

[rodtang]

Oh yeah that... sadly I forgot to pay for the domain at some point, so most of it is gone.

I have the whole site downloaded if you're interested

[RC-1140]

So another thing I've missed during my absence. The return of sixty.

It's really great reading words from you again!

[photekq]

I've had correspondence with Sixty over the past few weeks. He is alive and well. Just in case anyone was wondering

[romevi]

I've had correspondence with Sixty over the past few weeks. He is alive and well. Just in case anyone was wondering

Good.

[berserkfan]

I've had correspondence with Sixty over the past few weeks. He is alive and well. Just in case anyone was wondering

Popped in here out of curiosity only. I never knew sixty. But what about Soarer, photekq? Is he alive? Did anything bad happen to him?

I owe Soarer! He gave me a lot of help in my early days when I struggled with his converter.

[scottc]

Mu sent Soarer good wishes via snail mail and never got a response. I think he got confirmation of receipt, though, but not sure what we can conclude from that. It's a huge shame that Soarer isn't around anymore, he was a great guy - very helpful and patient and his converter was always the gold standard. I think we all owe Soarer!

[romevi]

I've had correspondence with Sixty over the past few weeks. He is alive and well. Just in case anyone was wondering

Popped in here out of curiosity only. I never knew sixty. But what about Soarer, photekq? Is he alive? Did anything bad happen to him?

I owe Soarer! He gave me a lot of help in my early days when I struggled with his converter.

Photekq is pretty active.

[photekq]

Photekq is pretty active.

You really are the master of dad jokes

I've got no idea about Soarer!