Apple II keyboards

[snuci]

The following pictures depict the keyboard used in an Apple II and later Apple II Plus computers. They are interchangeable and some of the later ones are in Apple IIs but the key to most collectors knowing from first glance that you are looking t an early Apple II is by looking at the power light. Earlier ones look like a key cap that you can press (you can't) while later keyboards changed internally and flattened out the power light cap so it doesn't look like a key anymore.

Here are some pics:

Apple II - complete with keyboard

Apple II - complete with keyboard.JPG (70.19 KiB) Viewed 4409 times

Apple II - Early keyboard in place

Apple II - Early keyboard in place.JPG (109.49 KiB) Viewed 4409 times

Apple II - Early keyboard top

Apple II - Early keyboard top.JPG (100.92 KiB) Viewed 4409 times

Apple II - Early keyboard bottom

Apple II - Early keyboard bottom.JPG (101.23 KiB) Viewed 4409 times

Apple II - Early keyboard side

Apple II - Early keyboard side.JPG (58.81 KiB) Viewed 4409 times

Apple II - Early keyboard profile

Apple II - Early keyboard profile.JPG (89.74 KiB) Viewed 4409 times

Apple II - Early keyboard key switch

Apple II - Early keyboard key switch.JPG (74.19 KiB) Viewed 4409 times

Apple II - Early power light and key cap

Apple II - Early power light and key cap.JPG (75.11 KiB) Viewed 4409 times

Apple II - Early and later keyboards

Apple II - Early and later keyboards.JPG (92.13 KiB) Viewed 4409 times

Apple II - Later keyboard top

Apple II - Later keyboard top.JPG (72.98 KiB) Viewed 4409 times

Apple II - Later keyboard bottom

Apple II - Later keyboard bottom.JPG (108.14 KiB) Viewed 4409 times

Apple II - Later keyboard side

Apple II - Later keyboard side.JPG (68.6 KiB) Viewed 4409 times

Apple II - Later keyboard key switch

Apple II - Later keyboard key switch.JPG (73.32 KiB) Viewed 4409 times

Apple II - Later keyboard power light and key cap

Apple II - Later keyboard power light and key cap.JPG (65.5 KiB) Viewed 4409 times

[bhtooefr]

It's also worth noting that MX caps work on at least the later keyboard. (Wendell Sander recently had keycaps and encoders made to use the later keyboard on an Apple-1 or clone.)

[terrycherry]

I can't see about the Apple II early keyboard very clearly. What is name of the switch?
And I don't know the Apple II Plus having Alps SKCC Tall Cream. Is it also has the latching lock?
If I guessed right, it could be the oldest Alps SKCC switch which made from 1979.(The Apple II plus keyboard)

[snuci]

Sorry about the blurry pics. I thought I'd start to use my Canon Rebel camera and I still don't know how to use it properly

Have a look at this page for more information: http://www.willegal.net/appleii/early-a2-keyboards.htm. These key switches were made by Datanetics. As for the latching caps lock, there is no Caps Lock key because everything was in upper case only, originally

[terrycherry]

Thank for your details. I have the Canon Rebel camera too(Which are 350D and 500D).
I can teach you how to take the excellent picture about keyboard and PC if you don't mind.
Another thing I advice you should buy the LED desk lamp(which can select the lighting power) and flash for the DSLR.

[bhtooefr]

There were ways to get lowercase out of these systems, and they generally consisted of two schemes. (Modifiers couldn't be directly detected, they instead just told the keyboard controller to output a different character, and the shift key did nothing with letters.)

The first scheme was the software only scheme, using Esc as a caps lock. The second scheme was the shift key mod - a jumper wire from the shift keyswitch to the joystick port's PB2 pin, which lowercase-aware software and firmware could then use to handle lowercase.

And, then, for displaying lowercase... there were a few ways to go about it. First off were software-based approaches that used the high-res graphics mode, you could get 70 columns of text when the normal text mode was only 40 columns wide. That was slow, and hard to read, but free. The second, faster, software way was what some word processors did - use inverse to denote uppercase. Then, there were the hardware approaches - burn a new font ROM with lowercase characters added, and then install a terminal card in slot 3 that handled text mode on its own, and had lowercase support. The terminal card approach also tended to have support for lowercase even in non-lowercase-aware applications, and gave you 80 or 132 columns of readable text, instead of 70 columns of difficult to read text (crammed into 280 pixels wide) or 40 columns of text.

Then, with the //e, they emulated the most popular terminal card standard (the Videx Videoterm, which IIRC emulated the Datapoint 1500) in firmware, the keyboard controller and video ROM both supported lowercase, and the shift key mod was also supported (but not enabled by default, because it was possible for a joystick to short out the power supply if the shift key mod was enabled and the shift key was held down while PB2 was depressed on the joystick) on the motherboard for older software that checked for that.

[mr_a500]

I didn't know there was an Alps SKCC version of the Apple II keyboard. Of course, I've heard of the early Datanetics version (also most popular keyboard for the Apple I, which had no default keyboard). I have an Apple II Plus with a keyboard from The Keyboard Company (TKC)/Apple. I'm sure everybody knows that TKC was started by ex-Datanetics people, supplied keyboards to Apple, then later became integrated into Apple. (and finally dissolved when Apple no longer needed them and went with Alps)

I recently bought a Cherry keyboard for my Apple II, originally designed for the only licensed Apple II clone, the ITT 2020.

Cherry Apple keyboard.jpg

(eBay photo)

It's made in UK, 1980 and has M7 switches. It's similar to my US 1979 Cherry Pro, but has smooth keycaps rather than textured and the sliders don't bind as much. It looks and feels much nicer than the TKC/Apple keyboard.

By the way, did you notice how much those recent NOS Datanetics Apple II keyboards sold for? One went for over $210 CAD, another over $440 and one went for a mind-boggling $560! My Cherry Apple II (also NOS) was only $31.

[terrycherry]

I take a look my unknown keyboard again. I did some research and compared to snuci's Apple II.
I strongly say my keyboard is the clone of Apple II(copy from apple II).

my keyboard

back of PCB

Perhaps my keyboard is the Banana clone of Apple II.(copycat too but don't know where it from and what is the switch)
Hope someone can give me more details if you knew it.

Apple II clone Banana.jpg (92.03 KiB) Viewed 4227 times

Thanks to snuci again!

Share the man make the Apple I, it could help for someone.
http://myownapple1.blogspot.hk/

[terrycherry]

I recently bought a Cherry keyboard for my Apple II, originally designed for the only licensed Apple II clone, the ITT 2020.
It's made in UK, 1980 and has M7 switches. It's similar to my US 1979 Cherry Pro, but has smooth keycaps rather than textured and the sliders don't bind as much. It looks and feels much nicer than the TKC/Apple keyboard.

Thanks the details. I use to search the switch of this ITT2020 but did't find anymore.
As I know Series M7 incluing M5-M7. Could you take some photo to let me know which variant it is?
I'm collecting this series now.