Robotron K7673.02 keyboard review (Robotron elastomeric switches)
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- Опубликовано: 21 фев 2022
- Skip to 7:24 for a typing demonstration.
Today we're looking at a cool and quirky East German design with some strange but interesting design choices! Hope you enjoy the video! :)
Intro by Kyle Carter
Outro by Facundo Cabanne
My keyboard reviews: bit.ly/1TbOtft
My switch teardowns: bit.ly/2C1QGHz
My TOP X videos: bit.ly/2FmpZfd
My XL typing demos: bit.ly/2OoAW3w
My tutorials and featurettes: bit.ly/2OrkLUh
My unboxing videos: bit.ly/2TSrr0m
I'm Thomas and I do videos and reviews on mechanical keyboards ranging from the most sickening modern RGB gaming keyboards to vintage hardware relics, or sometimes keycaps or keyswitches ranging from Cherry MX to Alps SKCM to IBM buckling springs and anything in between.
Follow me on Twitter for updates on my keyboard videos! / chyrosran22
The practice sentence was: "Hello my name is Thomas and I'm typing on a Robotron K-something-something right now. These things use confusing model names. Still, a cool bit of design!" 
Наука
Woah, I Just realized this keyboard was made in the city where i live (Auerbach/Vogtland (Not Auerbach/Oberpfalz. The headquarter of Cherry is located there)). What's even more insane, i'm currently working in the same company building, where these Keyboards had been manufactured in the past. NGL That blows my mind. The company used to be called VEB Schaltgerätewerk Auerbach, but it was later renamed into "SAA Schaltanlagen GmbH". Nowadays we don't make keyboards anymore. I must say, It's really awesome to see people doing videos about peripherals that have the same origin as I do. Thanks for the wonderful Entertainment, this Video was great to watch.
Edit: Before It got renamed into "SAA", it was also part of "Elektroschaltgeräte GmbH". Consider that i'm inexperienced in the history of these companies, so I could be mistaken. Feel free to correct me.
Cool!
Kind of weird, that its two Auerbachs, which also are quite close to each other, that were the "headquarters" for keyboard manufacturing in west and and east germany respectivly. Im native close to the Oberfpalz Auerbach, my father worked for cherry in the 90s.
I really didn't expect those German impressions, but they are absolutely glorious. Also surprisingly well-pronounced.
Well, dutch is quite similar to german.
@@DeKempster East German is a quite different beast though.
@@TuxmanXP for east german i recommend the video wasn mit dem kombi los?
If you've got a Dutch university degree and went to Dutch VWO before going to uni, you've had at least 4 years of German tuition, so people with that level of education have some German basics down at least.
@@DeKempster No it isn't mate. Not by a long shot.
You were so engrossed with the German impressions that you didn't mention how the shift keys are unlabeled, and the tab key is on the right.
I cut it from the original script as it made that scene rather crowded.
@@Chyrosran22 tsk, sellout
@@Chyrosran22 I think it would have served the video well if you did an American version of a German accent. EINA MEINA MEINA! NEEEINN!
i absolutely lost it when you said 'in the year of 2:13 AM'
your jokes never get repetitive or old, good shit mate
lol, as a german, that V E B robotron JAAAA just hits hard :D
I held out until "Eins, Zwei, Polizei" ... and then I lost myself completely. :-D
Your German impressions genuinely made me chuckle. I totally wasn't expecting that.
VEB ROBOTRON JAAAAAAAAAAA
The wolfenstein reference killed me
In real life, today's Klan are more interested in Russian.
So much ringtone material in this video! What would be more appropriate than having a "Verschmutzung!!!" (in Thomas' voice no less!) every time one gets a text message from that annoying colleague from the office during the weekend for example? Priceless.
One really interesting thing from the PCB shot are the extra contact pads --- I can see a column off to the left, and one in between SYS and F1. You can just see some around the nav cluster, too. Clearly the PCB was intended to be used with multiple models of keyboard. I wonder if there's a terminal layout model around somewhere?
Auerbach native here, hearing Chyro say the name feels like ive accomplished something in life lol.
The name "elastomeric" made me expect a WANING at the beginning, but these are just strange.
maybe the real WANING was the friends we made along the way.
Wasn't expecting a review so soon :D
Thanks a lot for turning this nice-to-look-at but not-so nice-to-type-on board into an enjoyable experience! Should be noted tho that the plug housing isn't necessarily authentic. I just picked one similar to the ones seen on slightly different Robotron boards of that era.
So, genug Schabernack!
I like how the "Return" and "Enter" keys are correctly labelled...
Aesthetically, it looks very nice. It just needs another spring and a quantum flux compensator.
finally. I love these crazy old switch designs
Robotron brings waves of nostalgia, and I'm not even East German.
true i am west german and this brings me nostalgia for some reason eventhough we ofcourse had every western keyboard/computer brand like ibm, commodore, apple etc.
Your German accent is HIIIIIIIIDEOOOOOOOUUUUUS, and I'm laughing loudly because your pronounciation is very good.
Freundschaft! Eine hervorragende Vorstellung dieses Produkts sozialistischer Wertabeit, geschaffen von den Händen der Arbeiterklasse, welches den Produkten des imperialistisch-kapitalistischen Auslands um bestimmt 50 Jahre voraus ist. Den Sozialismus in seinem Lauf hält weder Ochs noch IBM auf!
Good sharp pronunciation of the R. You'd make for a good German, well done mate ;)
I'm slightly surprised that the Control key actually says CTRL rather than STRG.
This remains my favourite review you've done. The contrast of smooth jazz radio DJ and FULL DEUTSCHE is still hilarious to me.
That German is spot on.
Thanks for the comic relief with the German language bits. I laughed my ass off (I took German in school but was never really that good at it).
I'd love to see a video on the Khalil mute jades, I heard they're very tactile because of the clickbar but quieter
Someone send this man another German keyboard asap.
2:45 Seeing this clip after at most a week of me discovering it on my own made me laugh out loud.
Oh that voice..... these swear words.... the imperial jokes.... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND the german sidejokes..... made my month.
This was super interesting. Usually, one associates cost-cutting and cheap build quality with, you know, profit-chasing private corporations, but this just goes to show that state enterprises can make absolute shit with the best of them. Great video!
This keyboard looks neat.
'Delightfully depressing' is an interesting categorization, I'll have to remember that and see what I can file under that. I'm guessing I will find a Trabant there.
They did look like rather bland, generic like, 286/386 clones, except the last one. no idea what that thing was supposed to be. Maybe something intended for a lab.
Yes Mr. Bassman is back 😀
Robotron: Best name ever. Also best arcade game ever. I do miss the 80s
Robotron was actually founded in 1969 and was named after the robotron 300 computer they were building at the time. It’s actually a surprise they didn’t gave the company a name like “VEB Elektronengehirnkombinat Thomas Müntzer” which would have been more in the style of the late 60s.
@@s4ndwichMakeR It's no surprise. "Robotron" is an awesome name!
3:46 so wait, basically the mechanism of videogame controllers? Thats wacky.
The little ticks in each keystroke are a bit weird. Am I correct in assuming that's the keycap contacting the dampening spring?
Notice the "SROLL LOCK" key, and the associated "SROLL" LED, both missing a "C".
Wir brauchen ganz dringend eine ganze Folge wo Chyrosran nur Deutsch redet. 🤣
Not sure my vocal cords would be able to cope xD .
Lots of keyboards here still have the second ALT key and the double 0 key on the numpad.
Actually your exaggerated german accent is spot on. 👍🏻
I love how he had a super dignified and low-key voice and then suddenly drops hard F-bombs in the middle of the videos.
Review of the Varmilo with EC Switches someday?
I get the impression from the double springs with membranes that this would be a keyboard that Amstrad would have produced for their PCW machines if they were East German.
0:57 I laughed my arse off listening to you doing East German accent 🤣🤣🤣
When I see you type Thomas I always imagine it's really two guys with two right hands
2:55 The date was already in Imperial units! Fuck that!
"10th of Virgintequartember in the year of 2 13am" 🤯
1989 really is the Year of our Washington 213 but I didn't know about the months in the American calendar 😂
Always love to see some weird yet unique switch design like this
nice vid ty
I didn't know that I needed an 8u spacebar until now
Haha...I pissed myself at "EINS ZWEI POLIZEI" 😂
Really good German pronounciation - though, at least most of the time, we don't sound like trying to take a shit after 8 days of severe obstipation 😆- do you speak German? DANN MACH MAL EIN REVIEW AUF DEUTSCH! 😎
The 'German' impression just cracks me up !
Ah, a cold and rainy day, get home and there's a video from Tom! Zee German ist goot!
Btw, have you tried the roccat titan switchs? Someone described them as 'comparable to mx brown' so I had to ger a roccat board. It seems totally meh.
Must admit you're not really selling it to me mate xD .
Why would you buy a board with switches that somebody told you were pretty shit? lol
I dont know why i find dutch guy making fun of german language so funny, they are pretty simillar xD
Thomas, since you have this sizeable collection of unique keyboards, possibly one of the biggest in the world, have you considered making a kind of "public" museum out of it?
(you could set up patreon for that maybe though it's considerable time investment as well and unlikely this is what you would want to do with your life, but it may have been easier to get hold of some of more unique and expensive models)
In your typing demo, did you treat it as a QWERTZ keyboard or did you press Z for Y?
Pretended it was QWERTY.
@@Chyrosran22 Zou’re a clever guz :)
Hi, how do I contact you?I have something you might be interested in......
Anyone else feels like something is off with it? Like it lacks depth or something? At 0:31 it almost looks like if the keys are printed flat on it instead of actually being keys.
It has a somewhat pleasant typing sound for a such a crappy build quality; goes to show that good acoustics and case quality are actually unrelated.
the keycaps have a really weird effect in video, they almost look you printed a really nice picture of the actual thing and carefully cut and pasted it onto the case.
i also love the stupidly complex design that turns out to be kinda shit.
oh yeah in case no one has said that alrdy: there are like at least 50 places in germany called auerbach and 20 more in austria! ... there has to be like 10 auerbachs just in bavaria alone. One of those is where cherry sits and the other one in the GDR has to be the one robotron is from. we were not very creative with names.... and this kids is why every german city has an american city with the same name
I remember using one of these to write up reports about my neighbours and print them on our office's dot-matrix printer in triplicate before filing one copy and sending the other two copies to field agents who would whisper a lot in corridors.
--- This has been a mandatory "i was there and had this" made up story in the YT comments, as is found on every video containing a thing, no matter how rare, how unusual, or how old.
TOO SOON
My father died from sticking one of those keyboard up his ass. Stop joking about this
Weird that the DDR keyboard has page up & down in English ??? 😲
and return?!
@@SimonBauer7 yeah what is the history of it ??? Maybe Chyrosran22 din't think of it ???
I had the same thought. Are German keyboard layouts simply like that? Maybe that's the story?
@@gyozakeynsianism No German layouts are normaly German 😲
they copied American designs, generally being 1-2 generations behind. And they made the proper keyboards to control those...
Sounds similar to Mitsumi KKR to me
I never knew that a "fuckton" was actually a standardized SI unit.
It isn’t. It’s actually a unit prefix!
That really is how German sounds in my head.
next try a west german one
Already did, Cherry xD .
Despite having lived thru the 80s I'm simply dying to know what they smelled like. 😂
Cocaine and Versace After Shave. At least if Cocaine has a smell, of which I am not sure.
@@maxbembel2962 Na man it's cigarettes, and toxic plastic that's still off gassing after nearly 40 years. 😅
@@maxbembel2962 I was thinking Aqua-Net, Jordache jeans, and Obsession.
If you ever took any electronics apart during that time, you'd know. The mention of it made me real nostalgic. It seems the era-characteristic smells of electronics went away sometime around the new millennium.
@@chuuni6924 Well I did take apart a lot of electronics in the 80s and 90s but can't say I ever noticed a smell. But then again I haven't done it since then.
Eins Zwei Polizei, Drei Vier Grenadier :P
a shame the typing feel is bad, as I actually kind of dig the sound.
Gib mir mein Fahrrad zurück!
0:56
you can land an airplane on that spacebar
butiful german
I always thought I invented the milli mile, like in 2015.
6:45 i lose my shit every time
Oh geez, this shit must have been a BITCH to manufacture. This has to be the only keyboard I've ever seen with the ESC key right next to the 1.
hm, what is the 80s smell?
Verschmutzung is actually read as Fershmutsung
Ah, the double zero key, possibly one of the few keys even more useless than Caps Lock which for some reason made it into the modern day
WHAT DO YOU MEAN WITH THE CAPS LOCK IS USELESS?
@@kornaros96 vast majority of situations that require you to capitalise letters require to capitalise only one, which is what Shift is for. Typical users wouldn't have any need for using Caps Lock over Shift.
@@Shajirr_ Even in situations where you might need capslock, I'm surprised no one has mapped it to fn+shift on one of those shitty toy keyboards you see nowadays.
🗿
Alsof vervuiling een mooier woord zou zijn. Nederlanders zouden wel op moeten letten gezien 'het Nederlands' ook niet de meest mooie taal op aarde is.
Ik haat Nederlands :p .
@@Chyrosran22 Welche Sprache liebst du?
@@kaymio6547 English
@@kaymio6547 You heard him! 'Murican!
haha cherry mx brown funny
EINS ZWEI PILOCAI
one thing that ppl dont understand bout the DDR was that they had to emplyo everyone. as such there were a fuckton of "useless" jobs. not that today is any different. /s but this fact lead to most questionable designs. you had too many ppl, so make it a bit more complicated to ad more jobs. not that they all did it for that reason, there was also the zeal to be the better germany or just plain simply their idea.
Tbh I think this argument was extended a lot in the 90s by companies who had to somehow justify a wave of layoffs, I big example of that was VEB Carl Zeiss Jena, most people lost their jobs after being adquired by CZ between 90 and 95, it's kinda sad.
they were also trying to not violate too many patented things (despite everything), so they came up with ingenious ideas.
Also, they sometimes didn't have material available in the required numbers. If there was a well producing spring factory, they used those springs for as many things as possible, even if they had to re-design the entire keyboard...
Das elastomeric ist meine ass
O:
🤣
abko hacker k935p v2 45g
What does the 80s smell like? Besides cocaine and cigarettes?
Random fact: they made 2084 of this model. Not really, but like this if you get the joke.
I bet that 80's smell is cigarettes, and cheap toxic plastic that's still off gassing after nearly 40 years.
Uh oh he just said polyurethane time for the enthusiasts to come in just like the Germans if any part of their country is mentioned in reddit
Nein, nein, nein.
Early
keyboard jesus pin me daddy 😩
he will not.
@@Supertimegamingify there is hope
I was expecting you to yell out each letter in German as you typed it. How else are you supposed exert authority over your spelling and grammar?
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