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SWTPC keyboard identification

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Corey986

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So the keyboard I bought on eBay came in. It doesn't have an encoder. It has two 4000 series inverters and a bunch of diodes/transistors.

How can I tell which version of the keyboard I have?

thanks,
Corey
 
Yes it is the $500 one.

I'll take a look at the back. All I did was unbox it and take a quick look at it.

Cheers,
Corey
 
Nothing is stamped on the back. The two inverters are dated mid 1974 and the included original documentation was written by Don Lancaster
 
Chuck(G) said:
The KBD-2 was similar, but used RTL hex inverters, not CMOS.
Click to expand...

Correction, not 4000 series inverters. My brain must have been stuck. They are mc789p. Date code 7409. It's been one of those days. I looked at it earlier and then by the time I went to my laptop I could have sworn they were 7429 date code. This is what I get for 3 hours sleep last night.
 
Corey986 said:
Correction, not 4000 series inverters. My brain must have been stuck. They are mc789p. Date code 7409. It's been one of those days. I looked at it earlier and then by the time I went to my laptop I could have sworn they were 7429 date code. This is what I get for 3 hours sleep last night.
Click to expand...

Let me know if you devise a cleaning/repair method for the keyswitches. I'm trying what you told me for my Apple II.. not sure if it'll help because of the design difference.

Are you hooking that keyboard up to anything? I wanted to buy it for my third terminal.. but the whole terminal with keyboard sells for $400ish. And I'm putting away money to buy some Digital Group stuff from Marty.
 
falter said:
Are you hooking that keyboard up to anything? I wanted to buy it for my third terminal.. but the whole terminal with keyboard sells for $400ish.
Click to expand...

To be honest, I bid as a backup plan to having a keyboard for an Apple-1 that I'm getting ready for a museum in Europe. So I put a high bid in because I was desperate for a 1976 or earlier keyboard in good condition. I got out bid at $510, so I decided to go heads in and work on the keyboard I had gotten from someone else. This meant canceling some personal stuff but I had a commitment and my day job prevented me from putting the time in earlier in the month and I was up against a wall. Well I got the other keyboard working fully (without schematics and it didn't use an encoder) and integrated into an Apple-1 after about 8 hours and didn't think anything of my previous bid. Then I woke up the next morning and apparently I had won a $500 eBay auction. So the previous person who outbid me retracted their bid. My guess is that it was the seller with another account trying to drive the price up. Can't prove it and my eBay rating it more important to me so I paid. I was a little ticked, but a decent parallel keyboard tends to be $400 or more. Heck I know someone who paid more than 5k for an early datanetics keyboard to complete their Apple setup. Honestly this SWTPC keyboard is in great condition and being the condition it is and the date codes on the chips it's worth it, I'll get it running and use it for the next Apple-1 I work on that needs an authentic vintage keyboard.

As for a TV typewriter being $400, if you can find me a decent one for that price email me. I'll buy it to hook up to my Scelbi. Right now I use a TI silent 743 and was going to switch it to my TI silent 733 ASR when I finish restoring it, but a TV typewriter is the right thing as a 1974 TI silent would have cost many times the price of a Scelbi back in the day.

Cheers,
Corey
 
I was also watching that keyboard and put the initial bid in but it went way to high, way too quick. Being particularly fond of keyboards lately, I was curious what the key switches used on this keyboard were. If you have any pics with a key cap removed or other pictures, I'd love to see them.
 
I have three CT1024s presently and am debating selling one (the one without the keyboard). I snagged a power supply off ebay (the seller sent me what he thought was the original he'd had (he was the original owner), but it was for his old 6800 computer.. not the CT). My hesitation in selling it is that it, like the entirely hand built one I have here, is from the original owner. He even sent along his diagrams, original order sheets to SWTPC and there is some precious correspondence from them in there. I'm reluctant to let the latter stuff go, or separate them. The unit itself seems to be in working order (I've tested it off my original CT's PSU). Really I'd love to complete and build it.

That said, if we are headed into a world where keyboards are $500-5000, then it's likely never going to get done. I just can't in good conscience lay out that much money for something like that. The escalating costs of these things is kind of turning me against the hobby. I do however have some old keypunch keyboards I could conceivably convert, and as I've read it it's not unprecedented for a CT1024 owner to do that. So maybe that might be the route to go.
 
Well, I'm going to be of no help on this one. I'm more of the "Let's just make it work" and not the "Let's keep it authentic" school of thought. I'd have no problems taking a small MCU connected to a PS/2-interface keyboard and converting the keypresses to something that the CT1024 could understand. As a matter of fact, I did do just that, because I couldn't stand the SWTPC junky KBD2.
 
Here is a pic of the keyboard with one keycap removed. You can also see the pin layout because there is an optional key switch not installed on the right. The pads are untouched and it's for a hard wired keyswitch and not connected to be decoded.

image.jpg
 
I'm guessing the big change to their keyboards was kbd5.. the one with the large CMOS chip? Haven't found any evidence of a kbd4 yet.
 
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