Side Logo Cherry Switches

PerniciousPony · 27 Dec 2018, 18:46

I believe that I may have found something interesting while harvesting some old Wyse boards. I bought a lot of Wyse WY-50 boards to harvest switches from, and one of the boards in the lot had several switches in it that I've never seen before. They are functionally the same as other vintage blacks, but these have the logo on the side of the switch instead of the top. I've been looking around the interwebs to see if anyone else has posted about switches like these but haven't been able to find any other documentation.

Here is a small album of pics

Myoth · 27 Dec 2018, 18:51

Do you have pictures of the PCB ? It'd be nice to be able to date these.

PerniciousPony · 27 Dec 2018, 18:57

As far as I can tell, there is no way to derive the age of the boards from the PCBs or cases. All versions of the pcb just have the copyright date of 1983. The particular board these came from says 980013-01 REV J on it. I've got a ton of different revs on the pcbs of my boards, and I assume that the rev's are alphabetical. I think D is the earliest rev I have, and P is the latest(going off memory on this, haven't looked through all the pcbs in a while).

TheInverseKey · 27 Dec 2018, 19:11

PerniciousPony wrote: As far as I can tell, there is no way to derive the age of the boards from the PCBs or cases. All versions of the pcb just have the copyright date of 1983. The particular board these came from says 980013-01 REV J on it. I've got a ton of different revs on the pcbs of my boards, and I assume that the rev's are alphabetical. I think D is the earliest rev I have, and P is the latest(going off memory on this, haven't looked through all the pcbs in a while).

The copywrite date is the same across 99% of wyse boards until they renewed it. Generally there is either a sticker or a stamp on the pcb near the right side that is the best way to date the boards. Based on the 980013-01this leads me to believe that the pcb was made in 98 but that doesn't seem right since I have never seen a wyse board that new/late in production.

PerniciousPony · 27 Dec 2018, 19:17

The Wyse WY-50 was released in October 1983. The boards are identical to the ASCII other than all the modifier keys being stepped. The ASCII was produced in the 90s. So I'd say it's safe to assume that all the wy-50 boards were produced between 1983 and the ASCII beginning production.

abrahamstechnology · 27 Dec 2018, 19:23

What are you going to do with the WYSE boards after?

PerniciousPony · 27 Dec 2018, 19:25

The boards are in terrible condition. They were heavily used/abused. All of the cords were already cut when I bought the lot, and I've since discarded all the cases(kept a few that were in better shape). So all I have now for the most part is the pcb/plate/switch assemblies and about five gallons worth of caps.

TheInverseKey · 27 Dec 2018, 19:26

PerniciousPony wrote: The Wyse WY-50 was released in October 1983. The boards are identical to the ASCII other than all the modifier keys being stepped. The ASCII was produced in the 90s. So I'd say it's safe to assume that all the wy-50 boards were produced between 1983 and the ASCII beginning production.

Correct but if you had the actual assemble stamp/sticker on the pcb that would be best way to get a rough estimate when the switches were made.

abrahamstechnology · 27 Dec 2018, 19:30

PerniciousPony wrote: The boards are in terrible condition. They were heavily used/abused. All of the cords were already cut when I bought the lot, and I've since discarded all the cases(kept a few that were in better shape). So all I have now for the most part is the pcb/plate/switch assemblies and about five gallons worth of caps.

Crap... I'd take some but I've already promised to buy boards from several others and have no room or money...

But please try to salvage some, just throw some Gateron Blacks in and and Arduino Pro Micro, you get a great board (using one right now) I've gotten very fond of the Control on the home row.

Myoth · 27 Dec 2018, 19:48

PerniciousPony wrote: As far as I can tell, there is no way to derive the age of the boards from the PCBs

Wrong, all chips on PCB carry a date code like these :

Myoth wrote:

A component.

This one would be from the 17th week of 1990

samuelcable · 27 Dec 2018, 19:50

abrahamstechnology wrote:
PerniciousPony wrote: The boards are in terrible condition. They were heavily used/abused. All of the cords were already cut when I bought the lot, and I've since discarded all the cases(kept a few that were in better shape). So all I have now for the most part is the pcb/plate/switch assemblies and about five gallons worth of caps.
Crap... I'd take some but I've already promised to buy boards from several others and have no room or money...

But please try to salvage some, just throw some Gateron Blacks in and and Arduino Pro Micro, you get a great board (using one right now) I've gotten very fond of the Control on the home row.

lmao replacing vintage blacks with lower quality clones of the same switch

PerniciousPony · 27 Dec 2018, 19:59

Here's a pic of the chips on the PCB the board came from.

And here's a pic of the PCB along with another I recently desoldered. The top pcb with the spacebar stabs still attached is the one the switches came from.

PerniciousPony · 27 Dec 2018, 20:05

abrahamstechnology wrote:
PerniciousPony wrote: The boards are in terrible condition. They were heavily used/abused. All of the cords were already cut when I bought the lot, and I've since discarded all the cases(kept a few that were in better shape). So all I have now for the most part is the pcb/plate/switch assemblies and about five gallons worth of caps.
Crap... I'd take some but I've already promised to buy boards from several others and have no room or money...

But please try to salvage some, just throw some Gateron Blacks in and and Arduino Pro Micro, you get a great board (using one right now) I've gotten very fond of the Control on the home row.

I've already got several set aside for converting. I plan on disassembling, cleaning and rebuilding those. The caps are really thick DCS and are really nice to type on. I wish I could use the caps on other boards, but only the alphas are usable as the modifiers are all stepped as well as being non-standard sizing.

abrahamstechnology · 27 Dec 2018, 21:29

samuelcable wrote:
abrahamstechnology wrote:
PerniciousPony wrote: The boards are in terrible condition. They were heavily used/abused. All of the cords were already cut when I bought the lot, and I've since discarded all the cases(kept a few that were in better shape). So all I have now for the most part is the pcb/plate/switch assemblies and about five gallons worth of caps.
Crap... I'd take some but I've already promised to buy boards from several others and have no room or money...

But please try to salvage some, just throw some Gateron Blacks in and and Arduino Pro Micro, you get a great board (using one right now) I've gotten very fond of the Control on the home row.
lmao replacing vintage blacks with lower quality clones of the same switch

Whatever. Put in Zealios or Nixdorfs for all I care. Or do a hotlite mod so you can have them all.

Speaking of which, that's actually something I'd like to try.

dr_derivative · 27 Dec 2018, 22:08

I came across some similar Cherry MX blue switches before on Taobao. When I first saw them I assumed someone was trying to make a quick buck selling cheap knockoffs by making them look like a rare Cherry switch

. Seeing similar housings coming out or a Wyse board now makes me thing these might be genuine too.

: TB11nZ4IFXXXXbCXpXXXXXXXXXX_!!0-item_pic[1].jpg (74.93 KiB) Viewed 5321 times

: TB2OHxzeXXXXXb2XXXXXXXXXXXX_!!177337617[1].jpg (104.66 KiB) Viewed 5321 times

Here's the link if anyone's interested, although at $13/piece they're not exactly cheap. https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=520911213609

ramnes · 28 Dec 2018, 04:17

Very interesting. Never heard of anything like that.

Elrick · 28 Dec 2018, 13:35

abrahamstechnology wrote: Whatever. Put in Zealios or Nixdorfs for all I care. Or do a hotlite mod so you can have them all.

Speaking of which, that's actually something I'd like to try.

ONLY choosing 'Vintage Switches' is nice if you can actually provide them consistently, throughout certain keyboard resurrections but more often than not, you have to use what's currently available.

Always ignore the so-called Elitists who have other reasons for making such statements because if you're careful with what you buy and mod, some newly produced switches can deliver very similar performance to old, vintage switches.

More power to you for going this way

.

Daniel · 28 Dec 2018, 19:24

Definitely a nice find.

#DTA19