deskthority

Hey guys,
after Scottex got an amazing beamer find this board arrived at my doorstep yesterday
Board arrived well packed and in really clean condition, a bit dirt on the case and on the caps but apart from that it's well conserved. 3 switches lost their click which was easy fixable. The caps have a spanish layout, some are doubleshot, some seem to be printed and some are engraved (eg the 2 yellowed ones). Sadly the number keys have signs of damage and the surface has lots of scratches, I don't know if there were some chemicals or if these keys were bad produced because all other keys look fine. Either way I'm very happy with the board, hopefully we'll find a way to convert it soon so that we can put it on our desks
Regarding the size: it's around 1.5 cm wider than a normal coolermaster tkl board, so it's a really usable size. At the front the board is 6cm high, at the back around 10cm.
And here are some more pictures of the inside part of the board:

Wow, nice find!

Haha brilliant find congrats, I love how these are popping up now. In Germany no less. I'll add this to our wiki page unless you want to do so yourself?

wiki/IBM_3277_typewriter_keyboard

All credit to the find goes to scottex and another member who shared the listing on deskthority, I've just bought a board for my collection. The boards were found in Madrid as far as I know and there are some more floating around here, so more pictures will probably follow in the next time.

I've added the top view picture to the wiki so that the layout is wikified now. And I've adjusted the production timeframe

hansichen wrote: All credit to the find goes to scottex and another member who shared the listing on deskthority, I've just bought a board for my collection. The boards were found in Madrid as far as I know and there are some more floating around here, so more pictures will probably follow in the next time.

I've added the top view picture to the wiki so that the layout is wikified now. And I've adjusted the production timeframe

Cool thanks, it is worth mentioning that yours has the different layout and I don't mean the language. I'm not sure what the official IBM term for that layout is snuci would know for sure.

Also we should use your third and fourth pictures for the wiki page also thanks.

I am quite sure that the Ñ key is not supposed to be there. In a Spanish layout it's placed at the right of the L key, nice keyboard!

Those number keys I would say are identical to those on my data station beam spring. Also I like how you have period correct shag carpet for the background.

That's my photography carpet For every other place to take pictures I would have to move my furniture for big boards and my floor doesn't look better

Retrete wrote:I am quite sure that the Ñ key is not supposed to be there. In a Spanish layout it's placed at the right of the L key, nice keyboard!

I guess that's true for modern boards but these IBM boards had strange layouts. The key came on that position when I got the board and it has the same row profile, so it's definitely on the correct position
Seebart send me a picture of an Nordic variant of this board which had the å ä ö keys on the ,.,, position, seems like the PF4/5 and Salto keys were needed for that input method and they just chose other positions for the special symbols.

That one is so cool. Congrats!

Very nice! What did you all clean before taking the pictures? Only the case, keycaps and removal of the dust shield? The inside was that nice and dust free?

I am looking into seeing if the original PCB can be modified for Xwhatsit use or if a new custom PCB Will need to be made to bring these back to life

seebart wrote: Cool thanks, it is worth mentioning that yours has the different layout and I don't mean the language. I'm not sure what the official IBM term for that layout is snuci would know for sure.

It is a Spanish Data Entry keyboard layout. The Ñ key replaces the # key normally found on the English version. You will notice the " is also replaced with X7F as well. Not sure why. You can see the English Data Entry keyboard layout on page 73 of this IBM 3277 Display Station Models 1 and 2 Troubleshooting Guide PDF.

Nice keyboard!

Thanks for the info snuci

orihalcon wrote:Very nice! What did you all clean before taking the pictures? Only the case, keycaps and removal of the dust shield? The inside was that nice and dust free?

I am looking into seeing if the original PCB can be modified for Xwhatsit use or if a new custom PCB Will need to be made to bring these back to life

Yes, that's what I did. The keycaps had a good amount of dust on the and the case was a bit dirty but below the dust shield this board looks like new. I've heard from other people that their boards arrived in similar conditions

I really hope that this will be possible. These boards have such a nice form factor, they are really nice for usage.

snuci wrote:

seebart wrote: Cool thanks, it is worth mentioning that yours has the different layout and I don't mean the language. I'm not sure what the official IBM term for that layout is snuci would know for sure.

It is a Spanish Data Entry keyboard layout. The Ñ key replaces the # key normally found on the English version. You will notice the " is also replaced with X7F as well. Not sure why. You can see the English Data Entry keyboard layout on page 73 of this IBM 3277 Display Station Models 1 and 2 Troubleshooting Guide PDF.

Nice keyboard!

That's a really cool guide.
Ñ is really needed in spanish

So cool. These Beamsprings seem to come in waves.. now it's the 3277s!

kuato wrote: So cool. These Beamsprings seem to come in waves.. now it's the 3277s!

After a spring of beam springs, let's see what the summer brings

SCNR

Slom wrote:

kuato wrote: So cool. These Beamsprings seem to come in waves.. now it's the 3277s!

After a spring of beam springs, let's see what the summer brings

SCNR

At this point I could imagine almost anything.

Support this man! workshop-f7/xwhatsit-cs-compatible-ibm- ... l?uid=5568

I wish that these pcbs would work but there is the 3277 mini beamer and the normal bigger one, the pcb is for the bigger one and not the 66 key one.
But I think orihalcon is working on a replacement pcb for this one. If there is any way to help him he should message us but I guess that my knowledge is way too bad for that

hansichen wrote: I wish that these pcbs would work but there is the 3277 mini beamer and the normal bigger one, the pcb is for the bigger one and not the 66 key one.
But I think orihalcon is working on a replacement pcb for this one. If there is any way to help him he should message us but I guess that my knowledge is way too bad for that

I sent a pm to orihalcon, hoping we can share notes and get some traction on the custom pcbs.

hansichen wrote: I wish that these pcbs would work but there is the 3277 mini beamer and the normal bigger one, the pcb is for the bigger one and not the 66 key one.
But I think orihalcon is working on a replacement pcb for this one. If there is any way to help him he should message us but I guess that my knowledge is way too bad for that

The layout seems to be the same as the full-sized version except for the missing function/ten-key block so if I can make a working PCB for the 78-key 3277, it should be fairly trivial to modify the design for the 66-key keyboard.

Wow, the holiest of grails for me. Such a nice size and a great layout! I love the stepped reverse Tab! (can't recall the technical term for that key on older ternimals to outdent)

Mine is from May '76

The layout seems to be very usable. This type of beam-spring switch should last forever. Its construction is quite solid. Does someone has any data on this type of keyboard years of service?

I'm so jealous, that looks like a great board. You should post a typing video

Nice!!!!!!!

Thanks to @emdude, @orihalcon and @DMA I'm able to give an update to this thread. The board is finally on my desk and I'm typing on it right now.
The PCB was replaced with the one developed by emdude. Thanks for the awesome work and thanks to orihalcon for running the group buy! After replacing the PCB I wired it up to a CY8CKIT-059 dev-kit which runs DMA's common sense firmware (workshop-f7/commonsense-controller-bett ... 13988.html). Thanks again to DMA's help when setting up the firmware, everything is working fine now and I was able to programm all the keys to fit my needs. The size of the beamer is pretty nice on the desk, the only downside is a missing column in the alpha cluster which kills the ' key on iso de layout, not the best key to miss when typing in english
Overall I'm very happy about the conversion and it's a really nice keyfeel. Thanks again to all the people who made this possible!

Welcome to the exclusive club of CS users If you find bugs - tell me about those.
Also - wanna upgrade to bluetooth?

It sounds hilarious to have a beamer with bluetooth as it's not a portable board at all. Which additional hardware do I need for a bluetooth upgrade?

hansichen wrote: It sounds hilarious to have a beamer with bluetooth as it's not a portable board at all. Which additional hardware do I need for a bluetooth upgrade?

It doesn't just sound like that. It _is_ hilarious. BT beamspring is a something of a holy grail around here.

As for hardware - I'll try to figure that out. There are 3 cheap NRF51822 modules coming my way - unfortunately without tracking - which I'll try to graft onto CS. If that's successful - I'll figure out the battery power somehow and bam - bluetooth beamspring, the endgame keyboard.

DMA wrote:

hansichen wrote: It sounds hilarious to have a beamer with bluetooth as it's not a portable board at all. Which additional hardware do I need for a bluetooth upgrade?

It doesn't just sound like that. It _is_ hilarious. BT beamspring is a something of a holy grail around here.

As for hardware - I'll try to figure that out. There are 3 cheap NRF51822 modules coming my way - unfortunately without tracking - which I'll try to graft onto CS. If that's successful - I'll figure out the battery power somehow and bam - bluetooth beamspring, the endgame keyboard.

On the upside beanies should have quite some space inside for a fat battery pack, no?