deskthority

Under the pretext that I have some old Dells to dispose of at work I took the opportunity to sweet talked the manager of a pretty large electronics recycling center near me into entertaining the idea of looking out for keyboards. He asked that I email him some photos of what I'm looking for to help the sorters. I guess put them up like mugshots.

Anyone have any photos or ideas on what would lead to best results. I'd guess for sure I'd want to give him a typical Model M photo. Beyond that I'm not sure. I'd also be interested if anyone had any succinct info that I could throw his way for what else they could do. I was just thinking of reminding him to be on the lookout for heavyweights and perhaps metal.

thanks

No Windows keys. AT, perhaps PS/2 but not USB.

Talk to Mr.Interface, he might have something, since he did the same thing.

Just show them the interesting keyboards from our wiki.

As a general rule:
Everything which does not look like standard layout (101-105-keys) except for things with IBM on them that click or Silicon Graphics on them in a granite like case, where the SGI logo is on the left and not on the LED cover ...
Everything that looks like its more than 30 years old.

Simplest rule of all: press some keys, does it click? Yes = a very good sign. No = probably just a rubber dome.

This won't catch linear or tactile switches, and so would fail to catch all sorts of great keyboards (especially really old ones) but it's a trick most anyone can remember and try themselves. Depends how loud it is in the place, I guess.

A more advanced solution would be to show the folk three nice keyboards. Good examples: a Model M, a clicky Cherry keyboard and a linear Tipro. Let them press the keys. Then pick up any of the rubber domes lying around and feel how different the good ones are. Hands on is the best way to tell. You've got to know a lot more to recognise on sight alone.

I don't think many people are recycling their Topres…

derp

Anything with a metal plate for a base.

Anything with a trackball or trackpoint (touchpad not so much).

dolch

Visually, it's impossible. There's nothing visual that would help anyone — they would end up with a scrapbook to keep going through, and that would be unreasonable to demand of them. With that said, they could certainly rule out anything that's thinner than a typical mechanical switch, although they'd need a photo of a Cherry ML keyboard to stop those getting dropped. (I don't know off-hand of any other ultra low profile switches that were sold standalone — they tended to go into laptops.)

I'm not even sure weight would help, as there are light mechanicals (e.g. plastic plate Nan Tan full of blue Alps!) and heavy dome keyboards. Murium is right about tactile too — good tactile boards are hard to find.

Certainly, if it's quiet enough to hear keystrokes, that would be a good test. Not whether the keys click, but whether keystrokes sound loud and metallic, with a good solid clack upon bottoming out. Everyone mixes up click and clack anyway, but that's to our advantage as then you'd get all the nice linear and tactile keyboards like green Alps and tactile SMK.

Indeed. Details matter, but they quickly get lost in volume.

Simplicity is the only hope.

The "representative picture sample" idea probably wont work that well. One thing I've noticed is that unless you're as into old keyboards as people on this forum are, they all look the same. I've seen plenty of cases of people telling me that they've found a Model M, when they have in fact found a rubber dome keyboard with similar styling as the Model M. Anyone on this forum would be able to tell the difference, but to the average guy on the street, they'd look almost identical.

webwit wrote:No Windows keys. AT, perhaps PS/2 but not USB.

Or indeed, anything but USB, given the number of weird and wonderful terminal interfaces out there. Might end up with a few ADB boards, but some of those are interesting.

By weight for beam spring Or metal case, would it kill someone if used as a weapon ... .

Yes, weight is a strong indicator. More so than case styling, as Daedalus said. It also has the advantage of being objective and easy to feel. Light keyboards are almost certainly garbage.

Connectors: yes, USB is generally a bad sign. (Anyone really throwing away Filcos?) AT, XT, RJ45 (which I'm typing through right now) pretty strong positive sign. PS/2 and ADB are both a mixed bag, and quite impossible for non-obsessives like us to tell apart! Not every PS/2 jack is purple…

7bit wrote:As a general rule: Everything which does not look like standard layout

This. Unless the guy is up for an eight-hour tutorial with an exam at the end, “looks unfamiliar” is the way to go.

But that would miss the Model Ms!

• Heavy?
• Looks unfamiliar?
• Sounds unfamiliar?

Any of the above: shove it in the interesting pile.

Muirium wrote:Yes, weight is a strong indicator. More so than case styling, as Daedalus said. It also has the advantage of being objective and easy to feel. Light keyboards are almost certainly garbage.
...

There are always exceptions, of course. For example, the HHKB Pro 2 is relatively light and the switches are PCB-mounted, yet most would agree this is premium keyboard. I suppose in this case, although it flunks the weight (or better, density) test, it passes the "looks different" test.

It might be possible to capture some aspects of quality visually. For example, a close-up of the dye-sub PBT keycaps on a HHKB Pro 2, RF 87u, or IBM Mlodel M or IBM SSK would show the exceptional quality of the stock keycaps, which in these cases also reflect the overall quality of the keyboards.

Try explaining that to civilians without an extensive set of slides! And while bearing in mind these keyboards will be dirty, at best.

They need quick binary guidance. Nothing's perfect. But anything's better than nothing. So to speak!

Thanks for all the great advice. I'll write up something and at some point let you know if there is any progress. I'll look this over again but I tend to agree with those commenting on weight. It's the simplest although he did ask for pics so I'll supply him with something. If nothing else, I could maybe get them to pull based on weight and/or pictures of an IBM keyboard. IBM would seem to be the mostly likely to bear fruit.

I'm not sure I'd expect them to spend time looking at the interface. Too bad I can't get involved directly as it might be fun.

I could save them a lot of time probably by just telling them to ignore Dells. I know, I know, but you know.