I have a surprise of my own. (E3E don't spoil it) A rare Focus board is coming in off craigslist
Your going to love it Chyros, knowing your love for Focus stuff
Oooh, colour me excited . I love Focus stuff!
Well here we are Chryos, the unveil. The board that surprised even me! This board is the
Focus FK-727, the 747's brother. Both to my knowledge extremely rare. 84 key AT/XT, 9 NKRO. Now, this board isn't SKCM Blue like I expected, or Alps at all.
Its Omron B3G-S. Cyan to be exact. The date on the PCB is 11/2/87, my oldest by far. My Zenith Z-150 might have been older but idk the date on it, didn't say anywhere. Keycaps arent DS, but amazing pad printed ones, have a very similar feel to Alps dyesubs. The board itself is pretty small actually.
The switches are light, on par with SKCL Green if not a little heavier. They feel more hollow than SKCM Blue, and are on par with SKCM White in that regard. They remind me a ton of the Model M. The way they go down, with that distinct 'two step' procedure if you will. Unique AF
It uses Alps stabs for everything but the spacebar which uses a clone of Cherry's style. Top notch stability especially for a 10U. Take away: A shorter travel and lighter Buckling Spring like switch that is pretty awesome! To me Omron copied SKCM Amber and SKCM Blue, the colors match and does the type of switch. Both Ambers have a big bump + click, and both Blue/Cyan are light, smooth and clicky. This add's to the mystery of SKCM Amber a bit.
The FK-555 could come with Cyan's as well, but only source I see for it is Sandy, whose site is in Japanese. Nobody here own's a Omron Focus from my research. The FK-747 is mentioned once in a 'identify the keyboard' thread' on Deskthority and the 727 has literally
nothing on it. Wonder how many of these are left in the world.
The guy on craigslist never cleaned it even though it looks like it was cleaned. There is some gunk on the sides of the keycaps as evidence. So to me this board was barely used. Absolutely no dirt on the plate or inside. It does need a retrobright but for being so old its not bad at all. At first it didn't work with the lights flashing, but after replugging it a couple times and using a different 5 PIN < PS/2 adapter it worked.
The U key doesn't work, and Num 1 and 2 chatter. Chryos, since you have some experience with B3G-S, can you help out with repairing the switches?
And here are the pic's: