KBK update for Friday, 20th August
A couple of brief nuggets of information:
- The DIN-compliant Cherry solid state capacitive switches are now known to be Series MF. Hidden at the bottom of a 13-page Cherry switches advertisement in Electronic Engineers Master Catalogue 1985–86 (and overlooked until now) is a depiction of five switch types used in keyboards: (a barely-recognisable) Series M8, Series MX, Series MF, and the linear and tactile full travel sealed contact types. The immediate question raised is whether Series MF applied to the pre-DIN designs; perhaps in time this too will be answered.
- There is now some evidence that Mechanical Enterprises’ mid-80s ultra-low-profile switches spanned two separate series. The rubber tube sealed contact type has long been demonstrated to be T-15 series. Back in 2015, Datalux identified a photo of the conductive rubber type for EA Manufacturing as “t16”, which seemed to be a mistake considering that Datalux president and designer’s son Rob Twyford described the switches as “T-15” before the advertisement was even found. However, Bill Buxton has in his possession a flyer for Datalux OEM keyboards that also describes the switches as “T16”, and although Mechanical Enterprises did use T-15 sealed switches in the Microtype, all discovered examples use the unsealed switches. In time, we may encounter an advertisement for T16; at present, there is no sign of one.
View within the updates for 2021
Comments
None yet.