deskthority

Most Sun Type 5 keyboards are actually rubberdomes, but thanks to Haata I got aware of this one on ebay. After confirming with the seller by a switch pic that this is actually mechanical I bought it - why not?

The keyboard came with the classic two-tone colour scheme and has pad-printed legends in Futura. The legends are in excellent condition and only a few keys are a bit shiny, while most of them are still very textured. The switches are MX Blacks (non-vintage) and plate mounted. It has some extra keys on the left and on the right above the numpad. The keys on the left are some sort of commands like stop, repeat, properties,... The cable (slightly damaged) is detachable and can be plugged in on the left and right side. It is not a PS2 cable btw. The feet are a sort of 2-in-1 system so you have three height modes instead of the usual two. And finally a photo from the whole backside and the label. I might use it just for harvesting the switches but I'm not too sure yet. I hope you enjoyed the photos!

Is that actually a Sun keyboard? it doesn't say "Sun Microsystems" anywhere in the pictures. Is it a Sun compatible keyboard made by someone else, who?

FCC ID says Integrix Inc. was the manufacturer. The ebay seller called it a "SPARCstation keyboard of a Hyundai / Axil Clone".

I've never seen a keyboard with Futura font before. I don't really like the keyboard style, but the font is nice.

I used a modified (by me) Futura font as my main Amiga font for years. I still use Futura for my notepad on my Mac.

Futura can be a great font depending on the situation. In this case I think it works very well.

Wow!


I didn't know these exist.


German is quite a verbose language, much more appropriate for poetry than for key cap labels:
Stop Again
Props Undo
Front Copy
Open Paste
Find Cut

I almost thought they were PBT Dyesub, verry nice keyboard you've got there!
I really like the font on this

mr_a500 wrote:I've never seen a keyboard with Futura font before. I don't really like the keyboard style, but the font is nice.

I used a modified (by me) Futura font as my main Amiga font for years. I still use Futura for my notepad on my Mac.

I thought the Filcos used Futura?

Nice keyboard! I'd have been jealous if it was a clone of the ANSI "Unix" style ones with the backspace over the return key and Esc where `~ usually is

The small font on the numeric row, fun cluster etc. seems to be the same as on the Sun Type 5: I think it could be Lucida Sans or something very close.

Findecanor wrote:The small font on the numeric row, fun cluster etc. seems to be the same as on the Sun Type 5: I think it could be Lucida Sans or something very close.

It seems to be slightly different, good spot!

Nice font! Was it expensive?

Not at all! I can't remember the exact price right now though, it's been a while.

mr_a500 wrote:I've never seen a keyboard with Futura font before. I don't really like the keyboard style, but the font is nice.

I used a modified (by me) Futura font as my main Amiga font for years. I still use Futura for my notepad on my Mac.

Aren't the old Filcos in Futura Italic?

As from now I'm the new owner of this beauty
Didn't had time to do some proper testing, in the weekend I'll fire up my SUN Ultra 5 station and make some real life tests.
I have typed on all kind of SUN keyboards, and must say that this one is by far the best one, the black switches have a nice feeling, they're not scratchy at all. For a 60% user like me, this board is huge, but is a Cherry MX SUN compatible board, and that, for a long time SUN fan is a great find
One weird thing I noticed are the stabs,they're like noting I've seen before. These are kind of Costar-ish type, but compatible with nothing, I'll take some photos because these I really something than can not be described in words. Even the spacebar is non standard, the mount points are in the same place as for 6.25u but this is a 7u spacebar.
Maybe I will try also a Teensy conversion for this board, looking over Hassu's code I discovered that you can use it without any additional circuitry.
A guy already done this conversion, and also made some changes to the code https://plus.google.com/+YannHodique/posts/LigrqSMyt8m

Looking at an Apple Alps keyboard in an other thread I realized that the stabs on the Type 5 keyboard are alps stabilizers, with the same guides for the space bar... this is strange choice for a Cherry MX board I would say ...
I have to take some detailed pictures of the board, so far is a really interesting find

I was quite surprised the first time I took the spacebar off as well - I never had seen such a stabilizer mechanism on an MX keyboard before.
Oh and the black switches - these are sadly no vintage blacks, they would have been smoother. That's the first thing I checked when I got the board, and I think with vintage blacks I would have kept it. But it's good to see it now has an owner who really appreciates it!

Yes, no vintage blacks, but they are well broken in and that makes them quite nice. Bottom line it's a nice board, and a coll item for my SUN collection

Necro! These are rare indeed but I managed to find one recently. I'll be posting here as I get some photos and decide what I want to do with it. Unlike the OP mine is quite yellow, missing a few keys and has some broken switch stems!

Unfortunately mine was broken, when I have opened it there were signs of spillage, wasn't able to make it work, none of my SUN workstations were able to detect it, the controller seemed fried.

I assume yours is in an ISO layout?

Yep, ISO, it's the one in the OP

Ah yes, you acquired this one from the OP!

No promises as to when I'll get to it but this one is a nice candidate for a controller replacement.