Author Topic: Omnikey 102 to Psuedo-Ultra rebuild  (Read 2118 times)

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Offline Hak Foo

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Omnikey 102 to Psuedo-Ultra rebuild
« on: Sun, 15 April 2018, 23:34:09 »
What I've wanted for a long time is a big battleship ALPS board.

But even the ones that exist, like the Ortek MCK-142, tend to have layout issues (BAE).  The best straight-ANSI ALPS boards tended to be straight 101 or 104 only.

BlindAssassin111's project changed everything.  I had been waiting on the second round of GH-122 with promised ALPS support, but dropped everything, ordered a Omnikey 102 I could part out, and went from there.

The 102 and the Ultra-T share a plate and most of the casing, but you have to rip three openings in the case for the extra keys.  There's also a bullet-proof sticker over that spot.



Mine had a remarkably rust-free plate, so I decided to coat it with Rustoleum primer and black paint.  The paint seems to scratch if you look at it funny, and you have to be pretty aggressive to fit the switches and inserts in.  Matias switches grip the hole in a different way than classic ALPS.



I tried cleaning caps with denture tabs, but there's a lot of discolouration on some keys (space bar) and some are simply shiny.  I suspect I'm going to use mostly Tai-Hao Olivette and some fill-in from an old FK-9000... but the nonstandard numpad keys are a hard match.



Soldering the LEDs is the worst bit of the project for me.  I decided to add little risers under the LEDs (scavenged from an old cheap plastic-plate board, since I threw out the broken wreckage of the original Northgate board) and desoldering was nearly impossible.

I'm proceeding slowly from here; I ordered a USB cable for the hole in the bottom tray, but it's coming slow-boat from China  I know you can route the cable through the foot, but that seems second-best.

Not sure if I want to go for a cleaned up retro look, or to dye it; BlindAssassin111's grey one is very sexy.
Overton130, Box Pale Blues.

Offline BlindAssassin111

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Re: Omnikey 102 to Psuedo-Ultra rebuild
« Reply #1 on: Sun, 15 April 2018, 23:50:40 »
So sweet to see the build!!! I think most who I have seen went black plate as well, so we match quite nicely.

For the LED risers, I just ripped the ones off of the omnikey PCB, it was already destroyed due to corrosion and broken pads, so I had no attachment to it anymore. Super nice risers as well, really hold the LEDs in there.

BTW, mine is blue-gray, not gray. :P

Offline Hak Foo

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Re: Omnikey 102 to Psuedo-Ultra rebuild
« Reply #2 on: Thu, 19 April 2018, 01:01:39 »
Well, I fin ally pulled it together enough to type on it.

Lesson learned:  The $1.79 from China Mini-USB panel mounts are a different spacing from the ones Adafruit sells and will NOT mount to the screw holes in a 102.  I used cyanoacrylate on mine; worst case I can hot glue it like the ferrite core which was clearly designed to withstand an atomic blast.

As for keycaps, I went with one of the boxes of Tai-Hao Olivette for most of it.  They're weird in that they are double-shot but something about how the off-white and blue interact makes them look fuzzy like dyesub.  Of course, their set, designed for a modern board, lacked major vital caps, so I scavenged the right shift and |\, and extra numpad keys from the original unit.  The spacebar didn't clean up well, so I took a really unyellowed one from an old Focus 2001 I had handy-- it really clashes with the Olivette caps by being so WHITE.  My bottom row was different from my intended layout, so I spliced a few more Focus keys in there too.

The left side, since it will be media controls and macros, is some ALpine Winter blanks from back in the day. They don't really match the rest of the board well-- the short cap height makes them look floaty.


One switch (the one to the right of right-shift) feels a bit sticky, not sure if it's because of the cap on it or if the switch is dodgy.
Overton130, Box Pale Blues.

Offline applehugger

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Re: Omnikey 102 to Psuedo-Ultra rebuild
« Reply #3 on: Thu, 19 April 2018, 06:45:26 »
Do you have any pictures of the finished keyboard (mismatched keycaps and all)? I’d love to see it. Sometimes a variety of colours and profiles can look pretty cool.

Offline losing_ctrl

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Re: Omnikey 102 to Psuedo-Ultra rebuild
« Reply #4 on: Thu, 19 April 2018, 07:03:01 »
Yeah, let's see some pictures of how it looks now, this sounds like a great project. I have a couple of Alps battleship keyboards and I love them.

Offline Hak Foo

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Re: Omnikey 102 to Psuedo-Ultra rebuild
« Reply #5 on: Sun, 22 April 2018, 01:07:59 »
Overall view:


Close-up of the worst keycap mismatch:


The sticking key seemed to be a matter of the cap on it.  The (heavily shined up) F8 cap is the same profile and colour, so it's a passable workaround until something like Matias offering quality new caps.
Overton130, Box Pale Blues.

Offline fohat.digs

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Re: Omnikey 102 to Psuedo-Ultra rebuild
« Reply #6 on: Sun, 22 April 2018, 09:23:21 »
Now I really wish that I had bought one of these things!
"It turns out that for a decade, whenever Trump wanted to get a loan, or make a deal, he would inflate the value of his real estate. For instance, suggesting that his 11,000-square foot penthouse was a 30,000-square foot penthouse.
And the attorney general of New York knew that Trump's property values were inflated because when it came time to pay taxes, Trump undervalued the very same properties.
It was all part of a very sophisticated real estate practice known as “lying.”
- Jon Stewart 2024-03-28

Offline BlindAssassin111

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Re: Omnikey 102 to Psuedo-Ultra rebuild
« Reply #7 on: Sun, 22 April 2018, 18:37:26 »
Now I really wish that I had bought one of these things!

I still have 4 left, so PM me if you want one.