I'm the guilty party here.
Some stuff:
1) Much of what I know about restoring Model Fs comes from Fohat's posts, and in fact my love affair with Model Fs began with an F122 that he restored years ago and detailed in a post either here on GeekHack or Deskthority. I wanted to give him the proper credit by referring to the F122 bolt-mod by calling it the
Fohat Bolt-Modification since he (I think) came up with the idea.
(And converting an F AT from the huge space bar to the Model M space bar ... I call that the
WCass Space Bar Mod, since as far as I can tell it was their idea.)
2) Regarding the lock light indicators, I personally thought outlining the section looked better, but I was on the fence for a while with it. Here's an F XT in which I used a single LED to indicate the Caps Lock ...
Which looks better? It's probably a judgement call. Y'all can be my focus group!
3) I know some people will say that this keyboard is "too expensive." But the keyboard itself cost me $300, and I only got it after MONTHS of trying on Deskthority and /r/MechMarket. (I got another for $250 later, and another with the Xwhatsit for $300 more recently.) The Xwhatsit ... $35-ish. The custom cable ... $40-ish. Other parts and things ... $40 (guessing here). Had to buy a real drill because my Dremel was burning up cobalt bits ... $50. Already had the Hakko desoldering gun and Xtronic soldering station.
(Yes, the desoldering gun was expensive. And worth every damned penny.)
And we can't forget about Ebay fees. Yay.
And besides that, I want to get more into the electronics-side of keyboards and thus I'm raising $$$ for a Rigol DS1104Z Plus. Either I do some kickass keyboard refurbishments and get paid for my time, start a GoFundMe page, or start offering handjobs for an oscilloscope. (I'm not sure which of the last two options are worse.)
I know that most of us here would rather get a keyboard and do this stuff ourselves. That's most of the fun of this hobby! But there are people out there who want vintage stuff and, because of work and other commitments (or the fact that they are sane), don't want to or have the time to research and do it themselves. THAT'S my market.
And I encourage more folks to try to make money in this field. Because when people have a potential profit incentive, **** gets done! The person that I buy Soarer's cables and Xwhatsits from ... I think (I hope!) they make a profit on each item. Them making money means they stay around making cables and cards and I appreciate the hell out of them. There have been far too many amazing, incredible projects in the vintage keyboard field that have died because their creator lost interest and disappeared from the face of the earth. And it pisses me off. And I think it should piss all of us off.
I want buckling spring artisan keysets! I want complete keyboard programmability via a GUI with a representation of the board ala Ergodoz-EZ or TMK for my F122! I want to use my vintage board with my smart phone because typing with my thumbs sucks! I want new form factors of buckling spring and Alps boards! And there's certainly stuff that I haven't even thought of yet that can be included. But ain't none of that will ever happen unless a very smart person decides that they can make some money or even a living making those things possible.
I apologize for the rant. There isn't anyone here in which that last part was intended for. I had a run-in with someone elsewhere whining about how much I wanted for a vintage keyboard that I worked on, yet (lesser quality) keyboards from obscure group buys costing three times as much and expensive pieces of colored plastic shaped like spikey fish didn't seem to irk anyone. I'm still feeling a bit salty from that exchange.
Thank you for reading. Happy holidays! Don't drink and drive. You can't pick your friend's nose. Etc.
Edit: Regarding the Buy It Now price ... I don't really expect that anyone will do that. But I guess it's possible. Stranger things happen every day. But mostly, I just REALLY want that oscilloscope.