New Early Apple Keyboard Page Started

Posted on by

Just added the first version of an early Apple keyboard page.  This details some of the changes that went into early Datanetics and Apple keyboards.  There are more keyboards to be added, but I figured that I had enough interesting stuff written up to put up this link.

http://www.willegal.net/appleii/early-a2-keyboards.htm

keyboard page

4 thoughts on “New Early Apple Keyboard Page Started”

  1. I’m a bit puzzled about the Apple II keyboards that you show. The “First Version” appears to be a mixture of later-style keycaps and an older-style power lamp. If you look closely, you can see the font difference between “POWER” and the rest of the keys. The keys’ font is the same as those used on mid-run Apple II Plus’s (early ones used the kind you have under “Second Version”, and later model ones used keys with a style closer to Apple IIe). It seems like there’s some mixing going on there, maybe from previous owners?

    For the “Second Version”, you state that it was introduced around serial number 3000 of Apple II production but I’ve seen lower-numbered Apple II’s with that exact keyboard; the only difference I’ve seen is that the power lamp is raised up to full height on the very earliest models, and then lowered in later ones (because it got in the way of hitting Shift, I guess).

  2. I believe that those are the original keycaps on the “first version”. In fact that is my keyboard, which I’ve owned since new. I did do some keycap swapping at one point on that unit, but I believe I replaced the originals when I realized that there was a significance to the evolution of them

    You are saying that you believe that the return key on the left (which is on my first version keyboard) is later than the one on the right in this image?
    http://www.willegal.net/appleii/images/returnkey.jpg
    here is some information on that “first version” keyboard
    http://www.willegal.net/appleii/appleii-keyboard.htm

  3. No, I believe the return key on the left is older than the one on the right. I think I understand what happened here – according to the page you linked, you did swap out the older keycaps with later ones. So I guess you just hadn’t swapped them back before taking the keyboard-first.jpg photo. Which makes sense with what I saw:

    http://www.easyscreens.info/gallery/20101120/1.png

  4. Ha – you got it – that is an old picture. I’ll have to take the machine apart and take new a picture with the correct keycaps installed.

Comments are closed.