Olympia CD 510 and Cherry D12-24A [cherry gold crosspoint]

[zrrion]

I've been interested in adding machines and calculators and the like for a while now, basically anything with a high probability off having interesting, novel, rare, or otherwise undocumented switches. I saw the Olympia CD 510 on ebay for a reasonable price and won it for minimum bid. The red spherical caps were a good bet for this having something cool and the red looked like it was in good shape with very little yellowing so condition was probably good too. When I bought it I had no idea what wit might have in it.











So there we have it, Cherry gold crosspoint. I know the wiki says M7, but the wiki is outdated and beardsmore, who the updated info comes from, has abandoned the wiki forever so until I get around to updating the wiki myself or some other kind soul does it for me you can check out https://telcontar.net/KBK/Cherry/M7 for info on whats going on with that designation.







I was hoping this would have one of Cherry's stickers on it with more information, but the best we have is the logo, date codes on the chips, and "patent pending" the date code on the chips is either '70, or '73, but '70 is unlikely as a patent hadn't even been submitted at that point. The patent was granted in '73 so that makes sense as the year of manufacturer for this thing.




here is a comparison of a later wob cap, as you can see the newer cap has a textured top while the calculator does not. I do not know exactly when this change took place or if it was a customer-specific thing.

[zrrion]

And on to the Cherry D12-24A. I saw this one while the Olympia was still shipping to me and that sort of clued me in on what the switches were. I was hoping it would be a switch predating gold crosspoint, but very early gold crosspoint is just as well. These are certainly the cleanest examples I have of the switches and since they are ultrasonically welded together it is unlikely I'll have any in better condition than this unless I finally buckle and buy some NOS ones from my contact that has them.




"Furnished by Cherry exclusively for the use of its customers, suppliers, and employees" I don't work for or with Cherry so I suppose they'll have to hire me if they want the possession of this device to remain exclusive.


Unlike the Olympia this one does not have any fancy latching switches.




And again we see patent pending on the PCB, but the date code for these is from '74. best guess here is that the PCB was simply manufactured prior to the chip. Still an early example of gold crosspoint, but not quite as early as the Olymipa










Both of these calculators have a black rubber mat over the switches to work as a dust protector. In that regard it is working fantastically well, but it has the side effect of staining the bottom of all the keys. It is especially bad on the white and red caps.


Strangely enough the dark grey caps are mostly unaffected, even on the white parts of the cap. Not sure why that is honestly.

[zrrion]

And about the machines themselves, they are both entirely functional, in good cosmetic shape with switches in good condition, and their function is fairly strait forward. The Cherry has a memory feature that is handy enough, but considering I never used that sort of thing before the age of smartphones I'm unlikely to use either of these for anything complicated enough that I might need that feature now. The Cherry behaves more like a calculator than an adding machine, having separated plus equals and minus equals into 3 separate functions, but neither is so alien that someone with no experience couldn't figure it out easily enough.

I do not have any plans to harvest switches or caps from these. I have plenty of switches for any repairs I may need to do and if I want a custom that uses pre-MX Cherry switches I'll just use M9 as it is a far superior switch to gold crosspoint. The caps are old enough that they aren't compatible with all forms of M9 so they're not really of any use outside of their current home anyway. Once I start going back to the office (at this rate in another few years it seems) I will likely take the cherry with me as it is quite a looker and still a useful tool.

I would highly recommend these to anyone looking to get a desktop calculator for practical use. They work well and look good, what more could you want.

[Ascaii]

Ive actually stumbled onto PCBS with these switches as well.

[zrrion]

Those look like they are from some sort of POS system, do you have any idea what they came from? They look really clean too, nice