Alps Appreciation

[Mattr567]

[seebart]

Ahh very nice, the P77 looking good. Chop jobs are advanced skill level though. I'd mess mine up.

[Mattr567]

Ahh very nice, the P77 looking good. Chop jobs are advanced skill level though. I'd mess mine up.

Thanks! I'm a first timer at this, never done anything on this scale before. More info and pics in my thread.

Alps family shot

[Mattr567]

Got a Canon S-66 locally for $10. Contains SKEW and 3 SKCL Green LED's as well as Canon's usual spherical keycaps



Board extracted:


PCB, reads 12KE120B. 1985 production.


Under the caps:



The special flat caps:

[Wingklip]

ALPS SIMPLIFIED IS TRASH LOLOLOLOOLOLLLLL NEARLY BROKE THEM BECAUSE THE SENSE LEAF DESIGN IS SO CANCER TO GET BACK INSIDE THE TOP (((((((

On the other hand complicated alps has a far superior trigger design

[Daniel Beardsmore]

It would be interesting to see an objective analysis of the early Himake AK and Tai-Hao APC switches, electrically and mechanically. Those had much larger contacts that were nowhere near as much of a headache as simplified Alps.

[Wingklip]

To clean alps keycaps and switch assemblies use Vanish Napisan - trust pink, forget stains
))))))

[Daniel Beardsmore]

)

[Slom]

Thats why you should use emacs and paredit, Wingklip!

[Wingklip]

)))))

)) ))))))) )

[Wingklip]

It would be interesting to see an objective analysis of the early Himake AK and Tai-Hao APC switches, electrically and mechanically. Those had much larger contacts that were nowhere near as much of a headache as simplified Alps.

TFW clone superior to the real deal

[E3E]

It would be interesting to see an objective analysis of the early Himake AK and Tai-Hao APC switches, electrically and mechanically. Those had much larger contacts that were nowhere near as much of a headache as simplified Alps.

TFW clone superior to the real deal

To be fair, simplified Alps are reduced shadows of their former selves. Hardly the real deal.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

TFW … Training for Warriors … Tactical Fighter Wing … Truncated Floquet Wave (huh?) … oh, right, sorry, Toxic Flood Water, gotcha.

[//gainsborough]

Short little "build" log:

I purchased an fk-2001 with blue alps from mechmarket for a really nice price (shoutout to pysl!)

Here's what it looked like:







I had a NOS fk-2001 lying around that I decided to use for the top case - but first I sanded and painted the plate. It was supposed to come out silver, but it ended up being like a sparkly white color - I like it though!







Then time for caps and case! I transplanted the dataworld logo as well!





I'm pretty happy with it other than somehow misplacing the "4" key... =( Luckily my current daily driver at work also has a dolch set, so I'll steal the 4 key off that one when I switch them out! Still on summer break though, so I won't be back to my office for at least another month, haha.

[nsmechkb]

Awesome work! All of the tones compliment each other so well.

[//gainsborough]

Awesome work! All of the tones compliment each other so well.

Thanks, dude! All of them except for that stupid 4 key >_< Japan has it right, man. 4 is an unlucky number.

[snarfbot]

i got a matias quiet click mini, its very nice. quiet, but not too quiet, pleasant sounding. good crunchy feeling keys and a aesthetically pleasing appearance.

[Mattr567]

I can officially confirm it. KBP Alps PCB's DO NOT support LED's. They may have spots for resistors, and spots for LED's but their firmware does not support it.

Just tested with the correct spec resistors and a LED of course.

[seebart]

Short little "build" log:

I purchased an fk-2001 with blue alps from mechmarket for a really nice price (shoutout to pysl!)

Impressive work. The FK-2001 with blue Alps does not show up very often. Love those keycaps too. Not sure if I've seen that Dataworld branding either.

[2ter]

working on some clicky damped whites:

[Menuhin]

Short little "build" log:

I purchased an fk-2001 with blue alps from mechmarket for a really nice price (shoutout to pysl!)
...



...

Somehow I like this photo most - if only we can use it like this.

[Menuhin]

Keyboard above: "Made in Taiwan", and keyboard below: "Made in USA".
I wonder what "made in" means here and what actually happened.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

The bottom one is presumably made by Alps Electric USA (formerly Apple Accessory Products Division, and before that The Keyboard Company, formed by Mike Muller from Datanetics).

The top one is made by Taiwanese manufacturer Silitek (FCC grantee GYU). I didn't realise this, but the Dell AT101 moved from Alps to Silitek in the old Dell logo era, not the new logo era.

What nobody understands is how the AT101 moved to Silitek. Was this sanctioned? Alps didn't block Silitek buying the switches from them.

[Menuhin]

@Daniel

I mean although they presumably were made by different manufacturers, but their forms look exactly the same, except for the colors and logos.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

That, nobody knows. So far as I am aware, Alps continued to make these keyboards (in Korea at Gold Star Alps maybe) while Dell specifically sourced theirs from Silitek as of the early 90s. This split occurred around the same time that salmon Alps went out of production. Alps-made Dell AT101 keyboards used salmon Alps, while those made by Silitek used blank Alps.

Somewhere there are photos of the insides of a Silicon Graphics bigfoot keyboard showing "Made in Korea", but I've never found them again, so I can't check the date. The Alps-made bigfoots seemed to be damped switches (cream and white) in keyboards made after the split.

It's hard to be more specific as there's no willingness here to properly collate data.

[seebart]

Somewhere there are photos of the insides of a Silicon Graphics bigfoot keyboard showing "Made in Korea"...

keyboards-f2/silicon-graphics-granite-i ... ?hilit=sgi

Very nice BTW Menuhin, you and me seem to have the same taste in keyboards!

[arkanoid]

As far as I know I can say the followings although there may be some exceptions or mistakes. Correct me if there is anything wrong.

Old logo Dell with a FCC ID of GYI3PVAT101 has a PCB with Alps logo on it. Back label says made in USA. Alps salmon switches. Earlier models have a smaller label. Some are made in USA, and some are made in Japan. Even earlier models have double-shot keycaps instead of dye-sub, and Alps black switches (at least for those made in Japan).

Old logo Dell with a FCC ID GYIAT101-102 has a Korean made PCB. Back label says made in USA (or Ireland for European market). Alps salmon switches.

SGI 9500829 also has the same Korean made PCB. Back label says made in USA (or Ireland). Alps damped cream switches.
Later 9500900 also has the Korean PCB, and has damped white switches.

Later Old logo Dells do not have any company or country information on their PCBs. Back label says made in Taiwan. Alps black switches. Mostly don't have dye-sub keycaps anymore.

So, I guess SGI 9500829 and 9500900 have the same build quality as old logo Dell GYIAT101-102.

[seebart]

So, I guess SGI 9500829 and 9500900 have the same build quality as old logo Dell GYIAT101-102.

At least very similair yes. Even my 9500904 I linked is quite similair to my old Dell GYIAT101-102.

wiki/SGI_Bigfoot_series

wiki/Dell_AT101

[Anakey]

Hi, I recently purchased what i thought was an Ortek MCK-101 board from Ebay as i recognised the coloured modifier keys. When it arrived it was indeed an Ortek MCK101, though the sticker is branded Mortek MK-102NT and it did indeed have the doubleshot keycaps however the switches were not genuine ALPS but clones. From looking through the wiki the closest i could find is alps.tw Type T8. The description of that switch mentions it is found in 1993 Orkek keyboard which matches with the date code on the chip. The slider on my switch is orange rather then amber as the photo on the wiki shows but the parts are otherwise appear identical.

Alps Clone.png (1.23 MiB) Viewed 4697 times

[Harshmallow]

Hey could you possibly upload the photo directly into the forum with the add file option? I can't see that photobucket image.