80s keyboard party

[andrewjoy]

The force is strong with this one!

If i cannot work it out on my own you are the man i will come to to convert the 2 on the right of this picture



EDIT. De-sock

[seebart]

Thank you for sharing the details MMcM! Impressive work.

[Muirium]

Ungh, sock photography!


Anyway, I'm obviously quite interested in your Micro Switch converter, MMcM. Because I have one of these:



The old Honeywell's been sitting in a drawer the last couple of years, besides occasional stints of keycap modelling…



I have the original case and cable, too. They're just not up to much on the Honeywells. Surprisingly bendy! The Space Cadet Keyboard I saw in person in San Francisco was much better.

[andrewjoy]

Socks you say ? I don't know what your talking about !

[XMIT]

Heh. If only the controller were written in Lisp too.

This is great, thank you so much for sharing.

Five years at MIT and I never once saw a Space Cadet keyboard. Though, I didn't work with Tom Knight. I did work a little bit with folks like Hal Abelson and have met Richard Stallman. I even took the then-mandatory freshman Scheme programming class, and saw an actual Lisp machine. But no keyboard. It was the stuff of legends, one of the fraternities had a song that featured it and its many modifiers.

I'm just waiting for the obligatory joke about how they converters themselves use a Read-Eval-Print Loop.

[andrewjoy]

Heh. If only the controller were written in Lisp too.

This is great, thank you so much for sharing.

Five years at MIT and I never once saw a Space Cadet keyboard. Though, I didn't work with Tom Knight. I did work a little bit with folks like Hal Abelson and have met Richard Stallman. I even took the then-mandatory freshman Scheme programming class, and saw an actual Lisp machine. But no keyboard. It was the stuff of legends, one of the fraternities had a song that featured it and its many modifiers.

I'm just waiting for the obligatory joke about how they converters themselves use a Read-Eval-Print Loop.

Do they still have the TX-0 there ? did you get to see that ? Or the PDP-1?

[XMIT]

I'm not sure if the "Tixo" or PDP-1 are still there. They may be. Some things are in the MIT Museum, some things are just in random labs. The weird stuff tends to be in labs. I saw the "LISP Machine" in person.

I probably saw all sorts of other stuff that I didn't fully understand or appreciate at the time.

[andrewjoy]

i wonder if i can get my 107 to play music with the new controller it has a speaker !

that guy managed it with a PDP 1

[nourathar]

waah !

[Parjánya]

While searching for Space Cadet details, I’ve stumbled on MMcM’s old homepage, with quite a few interesting files:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140313024 ... Cadet.html

[PancakeMSTR]

Do you still have that sun type 4?

[MrDuul]

Yeah that collection trumps most of anyones.

[zslane]

I'm insanely covetous of that white Space Cadet keyboard...

[XMIT]

I for one would love to hear from MMcM about how he got these boards. Having a Knight keyboard means that he kept some really interesting company in the early 1980s. I love hearing about computer history and I bet MMcM is a treasure trove of fascinating tales that I would love to hear one day.

[Parjánya]

Slom seems to have found out MMcM is one of the founders of Symbolics. As I’m currently in a Lisp frenzy, everything about this is very interesting.

other-external-f66/great-interesting-fi ... cM#p366043

[Slom]

jbondeson did:

Love the boards, and I can't even begin to imagine the amazing stories they could tell if they could talk!

The only way MMcM could have gotten these keyboards, is by being a true Lisp Beard. His must be long and gray.

I'd say that's an accurate description of one of the 21 founders of Symbolics...

[Menuhin]

With the thread title, I was expecting some photos like this also:

[seebart]

With the thread title, I was expecting some photos like this also:

The irony is that on the previous page of this thread MMcM showed us not only that he owns the most rare and shought after Symbolics Hall Effect keyboards but also managed to convert them and took the time to show us!

[XMIT]

My real question for MMcM is whether the Symbolics boards use "hold low" or "pulse low" sensors. I shelved my conversion effort since a "pulse low" board would be unusable.

[seebart]

My real question for MMcM is whether the Symbolics boards use "hold low" or "pulse low" sensors. I shelved my conversion effort since a "pulse low" board would be unusable.

Not sure if we'll find out but MMcM obviously managed to convert his three Hall Effects. He mentioned that:

The firmware will all be back on GitHub as soon as possible. It had to be taken down for a bit for reasons that don't actually have anything to do with keyboards.

Do you have that GitHub link? I PM'd him about this let's see if he answers.

[zslane]

When I was a kid, I dreamed of working for Symbolics. The closest I got was an after-hours visit one night when I got to play on one of their Lisp Machines for a couple of hours.

[Slom]

My real question for MMcM is whether the Symbolics boards use "hold low" or "pulse low" sensors. I shelved my conversion effort since a "pulse low" board would be unusable.

Not sure if we'll find out but MMcM obviously managed to convert his three Hall Effects. He mentioned that:

The firmware will all be back on GitHub as soon as possible. It had to be taken down for a bit for reasons that don't actually have anything to do with keyboards.

Do you have that GitHub link? I PM'd him about this let's see if he answers.

I would have a look here:
https://github.com/MMcM

[Slom]

My real question for MMcM is whether the Symbolics boards use "hold low" or "pulse low" sensors. I shelved my conversion effort since a "pulse low" board would be unusable.

Honest question: for typing (not gaming) ... why would it be unusable?

I think it would actually help solve the ghosting problem. And Shift/Ctrl would probably have hold low switches and a direct connection to the edge connector.

[XMIT]

Honest question: for typing (not gaming) ... why would it be unusable?

So, my typing style often involves having a few keys in flight, or, pressing a new key as I'm releasing another. For example, when typing the triplet "tre", I tend to not release the T until I've pressed the E. (Old Thinkpads had a fun bug under Windows where they would make an annoying beep if these keys were held down - the solution was to go into Device Manager and disable a "Beep" device...)

If I'm going to spend a ton of time working on a keyboard, I don't want to just get 1KRO from it. Though, all things considered, at this rate, I should just get it assembled and working and move on, maybe building a new PCB with new Hall sensors for it far in the future.

[seebart]

My real question for MMcM is whether the Symbolics boards use "hold low" or "pulse low" sensors. I shelved my conversion effort since a "pulse low" board would be unusable.

Honest question: for typing (not gaming) ... why would it be unusable?

I think it would actually help solve the ghosting problem. And Shift/Ctrl would probably have hold low switches and a direct connection to the edge connector.

Of course it would not be unusable, it would be suboptimal. The question as so often is if it's better to have nothing than to have something less desirable to work with.

[Brot]

Is this a novena laptop (blue one)?

[Scarpia]

I am speechless.

... just wow.

[paecific.jr]

What a collection! I thought I was doing pretty well with a buckling spring and hall effect...

[XMIT]

Looking around, MMcM was an early employee of Symbolics, which explains everything. This is about what I would expect from someone who was using UNIX in the 1980s. (I wonder if MMcM tried A/UX at all - that would explain the Apple boards.)

[Mr.Nobody]

Keep the originals intact and make them all useful, that's the right direction man.