deskthority

I thought maybe people might be interested to read a very early Cherry keyboard review from 1979.
This was before Cherry moved from USA to Germany.

very nice find, and look at that Dontho desk in walnut finish! Classic.

Yeah, just the thing you need if you've got a... frigging monster dot matrix printer like that.

mr_a500 wrote: Yeah, just the thing you need if you've got a... frigging monster dot matrix printer like that.

true I can almost see the weight of that beast. That would be a nice statistic, the comparison in weight between a typical computer desktop setup from 1980 vs. 2010!

Interesting article, tells you a lot about what personal computing was like in the 1970s. Do we have a schematic somewhere? I wonder how the controller worked.

While I'm posting BYTE articles... here's one on how to decipher mystery keyboards, from the very first BYTE in 1975.

Thanks for sharing these. So now I know what we can do with that surplus keyboard on the front cover of the first BYTE. I see interfacing arbitrary crazy old keyboards to our computer of the day is no new thing!

Dan S Parker in November 1979 wrote:My preference would have been to position the alpha lock key a bit further from the main section of the keyboard.

I'd say that's quite the timeless idea!

mr_a500 wrote: Yeah, just the thing you need if you've got a... frigging monster dot matrix printer like that.

Actually, that's a Radio Shack daisy wheel printer. I have one upstairs in the attic

Halvar wrote: Interesting article, tells you a lot about what personal computing was like in the 1970s. Do we have a schematic somewhere? I wonder how the controller worked.

There's lots of information on these on the wiki:

[wiki]Cherry catalogues[/wiki]

You want the catalogues section; the keyboards section is mostly G80, and those vintage keyboards were B series I think, not G.

Thanks Daniel, that was interesting! The 1979 Cherry Catalog.pdf does have some nice block diagrams on how keyboards worked before their controller electronics got their own CPU.

Thanks indeed, Mr Beardsmore. I didn't notice just how far back the catalogues on the wiki go. The B series boards look rather nice.

facetsesame wrote: Thanks indeed, Mr Beardsmore.

I'm not an old fart, just a fart.

OK, I travelled back in time to 1979 and bought one of these things:
The Cherry Pro first came out in 1978, but mine appears to be from 1979. This keyboard is made in USA, just before Cherry moved operations to Germany.

It's the first "new" Cherry keyboard I ever bought (only other Cherry is a used WYSE WY-50 with MX black). It has M7 switches and the feel can best be described (using latest scientific terminology) as "meh". Keys bind easily when hit off centre. Even Clare Pendar isn't this bad. This wouldn't even make it to my "vintage top 10". Maybe Cherry didn't just leave the USA for business reasons - possibly they were run out of the country by enraged users pelting them with eggs.
The keycaps are nice textured double shots (BYTE article said they were "engraved" but they're not) and the legends are unusually crisp.
"FACK OFF ASOH! FACK EM."

The space bar stabilizer is fiddly and primitive looking. It's what looks like a piece of PCB with two pieces of metal hooking onto it and held loosely, balanced on holders at the front. At least it seems to do the job.
I've been looking over 70's BYTE magazines and Cherry doesn't seem to have been very popular in the pre-MX days. There are a couple mentions of Cherry keyboards in two or three obscure terminals, a bunch of advertisements for the Pro keyboard, but that's about it. Just the fact that vintage (70's) Cherry keyboards are so damn hard to find also seems to confirm that there weren't many produced.

This is the very first mention of Cherry - a sale on M61 (M6) switches in 1976:
Well, now I'm heading back to 1979 to the Stanford AI Lab to attempt to steal the SAIL keyboard. (..and also tell everybody there to "get a damn haircut!") Wish me luck.



∆∞

Beautiful keycaps, and they as well as the whole keyboard look like new!

(Still looking for a keyboard older than myself, but I guess it won't happpen...)