we’re due for another extinction. never cherry mx again.
MX has a lot of high points, it tends to be binding resistant, relatively dust resistant, reliable, small, and cheap. Not the best switch design of all time, but we can’t all be mitsumi minimechs.
I love image. I’m glad to see a good number of less common vintage switches made the cut.
Thank you! It is nice to be appreciated!
Can you identify them all? I’m not gate keeping, I put some tricky ones in there as a joke for myself and I hope you might enjoy the puzzle. I can confirm any correct answers.
Sorry, didn’t see this reply until now. I don’t know all of them for sure (especially the few that look like really old Cherry like the MY and M9?), but own or have owned a quite a few of these. I parted with a bunch of my collection when I moved states last year, but still have several old boards that have SKCM Alps, vintage Cherry MX, and my clicky space invaders and some not pictured like my SMK Cherry MX mount and a few Model F and Model M.
Hell yeah, dude!
If you are on the east coast be sure to go to meet ups and show off for me lol
No m9 here though, the one next to the my is a mitsumi type I actually. I enjoy being tricky :)
There are so many mitsumis and it shouldn’t surprise me that I don’t know them all (they seriously are all over the place). I am now in the midwest, so we probably won’t run into each other.
I love mitsumis dumb switches so much people call me mitsumimax.
Enjoy your cows! Visit indiana’s keyboard meet ups and say high to big Z.
I’m not in that sort of area lol. I have thankfully seen less cows here than where I was moving from.
No chocs? :o
Should probably replace the irocks with a choc. Since I made this meme a few months ago irocks have gone out of production (barring a $10,000 order)
I’m apparently the archeologist over here with my Model M and its buckling springs.
That’s a membrane keyboard
lol no it’s not, could even take pics to show you
They are right though. Check between the barrel plate and the metal back plate. Model Ms use a trio of membranes to detect key strokes. It is part of why they sound so much deeper, more robust, and less pingy than model Fs. Model Ms are membrane keyboards and that is a good thing.
Yes, and?
Model M is another survivor of the mass extinction but since the switches aren’t discreet it was hard to put it in the image. Great boards!
Yeah definitely not discreet, more like obnoxious
Lmao, I wouldn’t want to share a room with someone else with one.
For anyone not in the know, when I said discreet I meant modular switches like MX or alps. Buckling springs all share a common barrel plate and sending assembly. It is why you can’t just have a single loose buckling spring switch really.
I believe discrete is the word you’re looking for there, though discreet is really funny in this context.
Lmao, you are correct. I always forget that those are different words. Thanks.
It’s a survivor the same way the coelacanth or horseshoe crab is - a living fossil.
What are the two switches in the middle?
Cherry MX black and Tai Hao APC blue (an alps clone still in production pretty much unchanged since the late 80s as far as I can tell)
Thanks!
I think they are logitech’s switches and cherry mx
Close! MX and Tai Hao APC, not Logitech. Logitech doesn’t actually make their own switches, Omron does it for them. You can see an Omron B3GS in row 2, column 2, and an Omron Logitech switch (can’t remember the series name off hand) in last row, 3rd column.
Yeah I couldn’t find pictures and they do look like the Logitech switches. But according to op it’s apparently alps.
Alps clone*
Not made by alps. Tai Hao apc switches are to alps what Gateron switches are to cherry MX
The XM clones aren’t even Gateron quality IMO. I did end up with three fullsize XM boards when a site was selling them for $5 a piece. They were definitely worth that much.
Has anyone attempted to draw the Victorian Era corollary to this subculture? Don’t misconstrue, I am a member too, and I enjoyed a chuckle, gazing from over top my own personal click/clacker. But also, I pondered if 150 years ago something similar occurred in perhaps the shoehorn community. Know what I mean?
No I don’t. Could you elaborate?
