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Comment by minimilian | Hacker News Reader

Wow; finally a keyboard with enough modifiers and no false assumptions about their names. Does this use the same kind of switch as the Space Cadet? How does it compare to the buckling springs of the IBM Model F? Can one flash QMK onto it, or another free firmware that allows one to do all configurations in plain text (for those of us who hate graphical interfaces)?

While I like the layout and the keys and the legends, I don't love the case; this, I think, has more character:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Space-cadet.jpg

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I think the original looks best, especially connected to a real color Symbolics Lisp Machine like this:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CWrArcZBNRQ/

It uses Alps switches. They are considered to be the best of the best. https://keymacs.com/keymap.html can be used to reprogram the keyboard.

Restored genuine vintage Alps or Matias Click.

Whether the Alps are "best of the best" is a matter of personal preference.

Matias' switches are modern clones of the vintage Alps switches. They have a poor reputation for reliability though, sadly.

I love my keyboard with Matias quiet click switches but they absolutely did have a bad batch that die super quickly. Had to buy a bag of spares to swap a few switches out.

These appear to not be Matias though based on the stems https://deskthority.net/wiki/Matias_switch

The creator sells boards with either matias or vintage alps. There's a limited supply of the vintage ones though. You can also buy a kit and provide your own switches of IIRC when I emailed him he said you can also send him the switches if you wanted a variant of the Alps that he doesn't have.

I've tried modern and vintage and even modern ones modded to feel like vintage in various boards and the real vintage ones are far superior.

The Keymacs uses Alps-derivatives, while the original used Hall Effect switches: https://youtu.be/oDozftThFMw

The specific model that Keymacs recreates rarely, if ever, used Hall Effect switches - 365407 used mostly "gundam" aka "space invaders" linear switches that operate somewhat similarly to SKCM used by Keymacs, though some units had ITW mag-valve switches.

36000 keyboard were all Hall-Effect like their predecessor Space Cadet and Knight keyboards.

All of them (Knight, Space Cadet, Symbolics) used linear switches.

This uses Alps keyswitches which many people think are the best ever, me included.

I think some of the space cadet keyboards used hall effect switches which were supposed to be pretty good too.

This board is modelled after a non-space cadet keyboard which I don't think used either hall effect or Alps.

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