Re: Keyswitches: II / Mac compatibility

["Lee Cremeans" <lee@lcremeans.homeip.net>]

"Michael Black" <et472@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote in message
news:b346iv$8av$1@freenet9.carleton.ca...
> Stephen E Buggie (buggie@aix06.unm.edu) writes:
> > I just finished a long overdue mass-repair of IIe/IIc keyboards: 61
> > keyboards arrived, 50 repaired to perfect working order.
> >
> > Has anyone successfully transplanted keyswitches from Macintosh
keyboards
> > to Apple II?  Mac keyboards are now cheap at thrift stores. Are the
> > innards made by the Japanese company, ALPS, which matches the newer IIe,
> > newer IIc/IIC+, and IIgs keyboards?
> >
> I don't know.  It would be simple enough to open them up and compare.
>
> The keyswitches from an Apple III were identical to the keyswitches
> in the Mac Plus.  That doesn't really say anything, but perhaps it
> is a trend.

As far as I know, all Apple keyboards into the early 1990s were based on
ALPS switches. Newer beige ones, like the AppleDesign keyboard, are
basically ADB'ed versions of PC 101/104 keyboards. They're membrane
keyboards, and the switches aren't individual units; they were made by about
three different companies (the most common ones being a mutant NMB Right
Touch space-saver 101). Obviously, a membrane keyboard won't help you if
you're looking for switches. A few older PC keyboards (three brands I can
think of are late-1980s Zenith, and the better Chicony and Silitek
keyboards) used ALPS or ALPS-ish switches; keep an eye out for those, too.

I haven't had the chance to take apart any of Apple's USB keyboards, so I
know next to nothing about them, but I don't think the switches would work
on a II anyway :)

-lee