Well, long story short I did actually get some interest in this project. The buyer asked for me to just put the white keyset in for now, in a black case. It took a little longer than I expected, but I did eventually develop quite a fast, efficient method for taking ALPS switches apart and putting them back together- which helped. The keys were also a little dirtier than I'd thought, so I did spend some time cleaning those also.
Anyway, the job at hand was to convert this;
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and this;
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into something special using parts from this:
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The first shot is the backplate I used, which came out of a white AT102W. I used it primarily because it had no rust on it at all, and after cleaning it up a little it looked pretty damn' shiny:
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In this shot you can see I've already started converting the switches over. The top half of any ALPS complicated switch is compatible with the bottom half of any ALPS complicated switch, which does help. Also, the "clicky" plate from any ALPS switch, including the one from an XM or FUKKA, can be used to make any black ALPS switch into a clicky one. The black and white switches do use different return springs, though: I think the black switch's spring is slightly stiffer, though it can be hard to tell. Anyway, I asked the buyer and he asked for the standard white springs so I used those. This actually made things a lot easier, as the easiest way I found to remove the top half of an ALPS switch involves pulling the whole thing out intact, spring still present.
Basically what you do is you lever the upper casing loose from the clip however you do that (I used two Stanley knife blades, one in either side of the switch) but don't remove the switch yet- if you're pulling a lot of switches out you'll want to do this to at least a full row before you start actually pulling them out- and then get a very powerful magnet (I used a magnet from a hard drive reader head actuator) and put it in direct contact with the top of the switch while gripping the switch with the tips of your fingers. Naturally this works better if the magnet is in the same hand as the one you're using to pull the switch out with. Then you can pull the whole thing out in one go, the spring and click-leaf should come with it and you can just tuck the leaf into the switch with the slider fully depressed and place it on your workbench top down. Easy!
Well maybe, maybe not, but anyway this was the result:
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As you can see, since my white ALPS board was a 102-key board and the AT102W is a 105-key board, I had to leave three switches as tactile non-clicky blacks. There's a bit somewhere that I've seen on how to "convert" the tactile plate into a click-plate using a pair of pliers or some such, but I don't think the feel would be the same; Anyway, the ones I've left are the Windows keys and the Windows function key thing, mostly on the basis that personally I almost literally never use them. Everything else gets the full white ALPS treatment, and they're all complicated.
The keys I've used (after consulting with the buyer) are the set from the white AT102W, which have yellowed a little but are better quality than the other white keyset I've got (from an ACER board) and should give the board quite a distinctive look in the black case. Since the white keys are laser etched, they should respond well to the retr0brite treatment anyway.
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At this stage, as you can see, I've put all the keys in and connected the PS/2 lead up. I did some initial testing here, because it's easier to remove keys and fiddle with the internals when the case is off the board, and I didn't plan to remove it once I'd got it on there. I did have a couple of issues with switches not depressing cleanly, mostly due to bad spring alignment inside the switch, but I got it all sorted and all the keys depressed nice and crisply and (more importantly) everything still worked after all my messing around, so I went ahead and put the case back on:
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And I think it looks quite striking, even if I do say so myself! I'm actually thinking a full set of actually yellow or orange keys would work quite well on this board if you could find an ALPS set, as the Dell case is actually very dark blue, rather than actually jet black.
Anyway, that's this little project done- nothing particularly major here. but the result is quite a nice, unique keyboard. I do also have a couple of white XM boards, so I can do more clicky ALPS conversions if people are interested, though the top half of an XM switch is a lot less compatible with the bottom half of a Complicated switch so that would be significantly more work (and thus cost) than this conversion was (with this one I could just swap the top half of the switch wholesale, whereas I'd need to remove and replace individual clicky/tactile leaves if I were to do that conversion). Also, I only have one, maybe two decent ALPS keysets in white/beige remaining, so there might be less choice in terms of colour, and none of my other AT102W backplates are as clean as this one (most of them have corrosion issues ranging from extremely mild to moderate).
