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Preh Commander AK 67

This Brüel & Kjær NP 0028 aka Preh Commander AK 67 was found by cdc_mkb in the attic of his employer.

KBD.news
Published September 30, 2021
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Click here for the original photo.

I found this keyboard in the attic of my employer last year – cdc_mkb.

An old post on r/mk identified this model as Preh Commander AK 67.

I was a bit disappointed too when I discovered the switches were not mechanical; they feel really great for a rubber dome, except for the space bar.

The keyboard was bundled with a "head torso simulator" used to measure the sound quality of mobile phones. Unlike the ortho Preh Commander featured earlier, the caps on this one are not MX compatible.

Still, this model has some noticeable pre-1984 vintage characteristics despite being built in 1998:

  • there is a coin/pencil tray.
  • both "shift" keys share the same signal; in other words there is no "left shift" nor "right shift", only one single "shift".
  • there is a "< >" key and "< ," and "> ." keys.
  • there is a "rep" key, it probably means "repeat/redo".
  • there is a "caret tilde" key.
  • there are two blank keys, their initial functions are unknown but they do work (at least in a hand-wired version)
  • many non-alphanum keys have an unusual position: "escape", "tab", "del", "ctrl", "alpha lock", "↖" (home), and the arrows.
  • the "enter" key is split in two keys: "line-feed" and "return"; like on electric typewriters.

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Published on Thu 30th Sep 2021. Featured in KBD #46.

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