I'm in love with the rectangular look and the colors of these Wyse boards, too. Just straight lines, no frills. Kind of like Thinkpad laptops. And it really feels and *is* as solid as it looks. My kitchen scale tells me it weighs exactly 1,5 kg (should be 3.3 lbs., no?). My Model M mini weighs 1,6 kg (3.5 lbs.), my *full size* G80-3000 is 1,0 kg (2.2 lbs.).
My opinion about the black Cherrys in this board is as follows: Today I'm a bit irritated by the lack of any tactile feedback when the switch activates, but only when I'm pressing the keys gently to get in touch with it. Then it feels like my fingers are searching for the sweet spot and don't make a find. But when I'm about to get real work done I'm bottoming out all the time anyway, and the bottoming out feeling as well as the sound is *very* pleasing on this board, probably due to its heavy construction. All in all I have to say that linear switches aren't for me any more, I definitely prefer clicky keyboards. On the other hand if I only had the choice between black Cherrys and any rubber dome keyboard, the decision would be easy.
Just did a side by side comparison with my G80-3000 with blue Cherrys and I have to add that the black ones (in my Wyse board at least) require *much* more force to press them down. I'm not sure if this is the case with current Cherry blacks too, since mine are from quite different decades. For me stiff springs are no issue because I push keys quite hard.
Sadly this Wyse terminal does not have an amber screen. I have another DEC terminal with amber screen, but the keyboard sucks a*s. I think it's a VT420.
Sandy, I know this song but from a different context ("He got game" by Public Enemy) and the singing is really nice. These days I'm more into electronic music though.
I'm no longer using the dumb terminals. They are a relict from a time when there were no graphical user interfaces and no personal computers. Companies had only a few or even one expensive mainframe computer running a timesharing operating system and tenths to hundreds of people had these cheap dumb terminals on their desk and would all login to the same computer and get their work done. When I learned about Unix and programming (must have been circa 2000) I absolutely fell in love with the design and the principles of the system. Many of Unix' design decisions are a direct result of the "limitations" imposed by the terminals, for example the shells job control mechanisms or that programs are silent by default and only display messages in case of errors (because terminals are slow). And since these terminals could be had for free in Usenet I wanted to know how it felt working on a "real" Unix system. That's how I came to possess these things.
I would be interested in a "magical soldering tour" indeed, but only if you have a link to an existing website or something. You don't need to write something exclusive up because I'm not going to replace the keys any time soon, since I don't have the needed parts. Additionally, the terminal will be back in storage soon anyway. I had fun with it, but the blurry CRT screen alone is reason enough to not spend any more time with it. Your 840358 is *awesome* though! The colored F*-keys seem somewhat misplaced but very appealing at the same time. I really need to get a PC-compatible Wyse board someday.
