NEC TC-1018

HaaTa · 06 Nov 2016, 21:59

Remember that Topre keyboard a while back that I used to show off the new force gauge?
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Well, this seems to be it's older bolder big brother, made by OEM'd by NEC. And in older, I mean by about 1 year. If I'm reading the dates correctly they (yes I have two of them) seem to be from around the end of the Heisei year 1 (1989/1990).

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As many of you know I have a *really* big backlog. Probably the main reason for this is that I can spend hours cleaning each keyboard to be ready for photos. Like the Topre keyboard, this was pulled from some sort of newspaper printing room, so it was filthy and needed to be scrubbed down...
Unfortunately, this keyboard also has one of the banes of my existence. Engraved keycaps. I probably spent 5-6 hours trying to get the grim malleable so I could extract it out with a very small screwdriver or knife in the case of the kanji...
However, for pictures, it's totally worth it. There's just something about bold infilled engraved legends that just jump out at you. It's almost like they're 3d

Before

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After (well, sorta, I only cleaned one of the keyboards)

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Switch wise, linear NEC switches I have never seen before (and 3 different variants). They are extremely smooth and have longer travel than we typically see.

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The black variant is the common switch, it has the longest travel.

The grey variant has a slight shorter travel as is slightly lighter. It was used on modifier/larger keys. For reasons, we'll probably never know...

The final variant is a LED version of the switch. It's particularly interesting because it uses the force spring as the conduction medium for the LED. I'm not aware of any other switches (off-hand at least) that do this. Alps has a few switches but they have a separate force spring.

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Flickr Album: https://flic.kr/s/aHskGA4obb

zslane · 06 Nov 2016, 22:39

Such lovely sphericals! Amazing clean-up job too.

It's interesting how different the texture is between the various keys.

XMIT · 07 Nov 2016, 01:33

Get an ultrasonic cleaner. That will make quick work of cleaning dirty engraved key caps.

XMIT · 07 Nov 2016, 02:29

Oh, and - when are you going to post some Alps switch force curves?

ohaimark · 07 Nov 2016, 02:54

I think I read about some goofy Russian keyboard that used its force spring for conduction. Great find, in any case.

HaaTa · 07 Nov 2016, 03:31

XMIT wrote: Oh, and - when are you going to post some Alps switch force curves?

I measured an Alps-like clone just today...will be posting the keyboard in the next day or two.

seebart · 07 Nov 2016, 07:08

Those sphericals...amazing.

Once again thanks for the force curve work.

Chyros · 07 Nov 2016, 11:00

Amazing board! The switches really look like Fujitsu magnetic reed btw, including the shape of the slider =o .

andreas · 14 Oct 2022, 18:09

I was very inspired by this NEC keyboard and its Topre sibling, so I made some keycaps for my FC660C. I'm going to reprint the spacebar in blue at a later time.

: ursa_sachiko_all_printed_v01.jpg (512.9 KiB) Viewed 4927 times