deskthority

These rubbery rings came along with a miscellany of caps I got lately.
Anyone know what they are? About the same size as small coins, and several millimetres thick. I have more than this, perhaps a whole keyboard's worth, if that's indeed where they go!
Could they have something to do with IBM Selectrics / beamsprings? Because there were indeed some of those caps in the box. And the slots are similar in the rings to those in beamspring caps.



Among others.
And a bunch of Clare Pendar switches and caps I already posted.



Mysterious!

Maybe key blockers for beamspring switches? I.e. they go onto the stem so that you can't depress the switch?

Or maybe dampers? Something like o-rings for Cherry MX?

Plausible. Trouble is I don't have the keyboard they came from, they're just spare parts.

If they're IBM, then whatever keyboard it was, it wore those blue and grey caps. Who's stripped down a Selectric, I wonder? (PMing Cindy…)

They ring a bell, something ancient in the attic. I will go look in a little while. Are they flexible, easily bent, or pretty firm?

Of all the 40+ beam springs that have come through here, I have not seen these on any of those.

Beam Spring O rings!

Not that you would want to silence such a click/clack...

The RM1 reminds me of an old calculator that had several memories. You could figure multiple equations or columns of numbers, and store the results from each in a different memory location.

Thanks Cindy. They are likely old indeed, probably early 80s. Flexible, quite supple. They do strike me as chunky, vintage o-rings! But it's just a guess.

You know what's scary, I think I recognize nearly all of those keycaps...

HaaTa wrote:You know what's scary, I think I recognize nearly all of those keycaps...

That's not scary, that's impressive!

Nearly? Do elaborate!

DSC_0525 by triplehaata, on Flickr

Not quite, but pretty close (https://plus.google.com/photos/11384566 ... 5823397356)


Closer?
Untitled by triplehaata, on Flickr

The RM1, R and 0,3,4 keys are almost certainly from calculators.

Almost, but not quite (https://plus.google.com/photos/11384566 ... 5823397356)


Pretty good methinks
DSC_1099 by triplehaata, on Flickr

The only one I'm pretty sure I haven't seen is the Print/Send Line keycaps. But it looks like there's some sort of insert...

Muirium wrote:Nearly? Do elaborate!

There you go Mu! ;p

Ah, well those unseen caps are the ones I actually have an ID for! They're the internal lightbulb Clare switch caps I had in the other thread:



I've three of them, I think. The white one is in the foreground here. Translucent, ready for the wee bulb that slides in as it's pressed down around it, which would make it brighter when pushed:



I like all three of these caps. The others are unrelated, but they have a central window right in the stem for their own indicators. Again smarter than what we have around today.

Anyway, I need to shoot a bunch more pictures (I promised Facet I would) and do a real stock take. Ah winter's everdark, you're almost over now…