This is an industrial keyboard from around 1983 manufactured by Honeywell. It features an extremely rare tall stem variant of the Microswitch SC series switches. They’re clicky tactile and utilize a capacitive sense system similar to the IBM Beamspring or Model F. The tactility is achieved with a spring over buckling plate setup similar to Alps SKCP.

Everything about the board is brutally industrial. Caps are thick, case is thick, cable is thick, etc. It should easily survive a nuclear winter without missing a keystroke.

I’m only aware of one other of these in existence. It seems to be in a museum and displayed alongside its original system (which I sadly don’t have). https://all-andorra.com/modicon-584-hmi/

Fortunately this board shares some similarities with other Honeywell boards made around this time. Although none of them use tall stem SC switches, they shared a protocol so a QMK port from MMcM worked with barely any modification.

The board

Keycap removed

Connector

Case is 5-10mm thick cast aluminum

“Engineering Keyboard Prototype”

Controller

Dirty switches

Tall stem SC

Monstrous caps

Backing and capacitive membrane removed

Buckling plate (think hair barette)

USB bulkhead I printed

Nice and sturdy

Simple converter

Anemic port in comparison to the original

Cleaned and good to go!

The conversion to USB/QMK is reversible should I ever come across an OG system.

  • wjrii
    2•1 year ago

    Love seeing these old warhorses updated in a non-destructive way. I fear for my wrists should I ever come across one, though.

  • JukeCity
    2•1 year ago

    What a great find! I love those keycaps, reminds me a lot of the keycaps on old Fujitsu keyboards that were also ridiculously thick. Even the brown color of the caps is really similar.

    Stuff like this makes me want to start looking for old keyboards again, but I sold off all my vintage boards to slim down my collection into a few custom tkls, most of which use alps switches. I just don’t have any justification to hoard vintage keyboards anymore when my custom boards hit both the modern look and amazing vintage feel.