Great start on keyboard realism with ebay purchase

The keyboard used with the 1130 is the mechanical keyboard from the 029 keypunch, which has quite a different feel from the microswitch based keyboards of present day systems. The 1130 used the same shape and coloring as the 029 keys, with slightly differences in the number of keys and their assignment.

IBM 1130 keyboard

Keyboard from an IBM 029 Keypunch

I came across a keyboard on Ebay that was from a data entry system that competed with the IBM 029 and 129 products, thus it was modeled closely on the look and feel of the IBM version. This is an excellent basis upon which to build my 1130 replica keyboard.

Ebay keyboard I acquired for use with 1130 project

Another view of the keyboard from ebay

The keyboard does not use the mechanical bail switch decoding mechanism of the IBM versions, instead it uses photocells to detect keypresses. As you can see, the colors are slightly different, most obvious with the darker grey in my unit, but this is well within the bounds of human memory for absolute hues, meaning that it will be perceived to be the same as the 1130 version unless compared directly. This is especially true for most people who will have only a past memory of the actual keyboard.

I will need to do some investigation once it arrives to discover how to identify keypresses, then build my interface logic to translate this to 1130 keyboard behaviors. Fortunately, there is a patent for the mechanism that provides some insight into its construction and use. The interface looks super simple to create. Further, the mechanism seems to provide the latching, need to restore and other characteristics that I want my keyboard to exhibit, so as to be quite reminiscent of the IBM 1130 keyboard. I have included a diagram from the patent here to illustrate the suitability of this keyboard for my purpose.

Diagram from US patent 3,092,310 granted June 1963 

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