Inner Beauty: Filco FKBN87Z/EB with real white Alps

[megarat]

Inspired by the knowledge of chloe and the work of billw from this thread, I went about the process of transplanting the original rubber-dampened white Alps from a SGI bigfoot keyboard into the body of a new Filco FKBN87Z/EB.

I'm happy to report that it worked.

Some notes:

Step 1:  Obtain a pair of new-in-bag SGI bigfoot keyboards.



I found these new for US$40 apiece.  Nice clean boards filled with pristine, unused original white Alps switches with rubber dampeners.  These keyboards are not the PS/2 variants, but the ones with proprietary SGI interfaces for the Indigo/Onyx computers.  Otherwise -- in terms of switches -- they're essentially identical.  I think the only difference is the color of the rubber dampeners.  These keyboards aren't exactly useful for using with modern computers, but they're truly awesome for salvaging vintage parts.  

Step 2:  Order a pair of Filco FKBN87Z/EB from Elite Keyboards.



I guess I'm lucky, in that elitekeyboards sold out in only a few days.

Step 3:  Compare.

I have very fond memories of this keyboard, during my time as an SGI hobbyist.  Even so, it's been 5+ years since I got out of the SGI game, and before dismantling these pieces of hardware, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't just blinded by nostalgia.  Now that I've been playing with buckling springs and Topres, would the white Alps hold up?

While I didn't completely melt over the SGI board with love and honey, I prefer it tremendously over the stock Filco.  I'll post an in-depth comparison later under the reviews section, but I found the touch of the Filco switches to be too light to my preferences, and they're loud in a way that sound cheap rather than industrious.

Still, the Alps in the SGI board felt very nice, and certainly worthy enough to proceed, if for no other reason than scientific curiosity.

Step 4:  Depopulate the switches from the SGI board.

This was pretty easy to do.  Note that I'm an intermediate (or at least advanced beginner) solderer.  Some of the switches had their pins bent back pretty severely, which made them less-trivial to remove, but they still didn't present any heady obstacles.

Step 5:  Depopulate the switches from the Filco board.

In theory this should've been easier than the previous step, as the switches were perfectly orderly, nicely labeled on the PCB, and all had straight pins.  However, I was having problems with my soldering iron that created some heavy frustration until I bought a $10 replacement from Rat Shack.  So this took maybe an hour longer than it should've.

Unlike billm, I used desoldering braid instead of a desoldering pump, but I think that's just a matter of taste.  The braid worked great, especially if you were generous with it.

Step 6:  Populate the Filco board with the SGI switches and resolder.

Blink and it's over.  Piece of cake.  Below is the repopulated board.  If you look closely you can see the "Alps" logo on the bottom of the switches.



Step 7:  Re-assemble.

For some reason I'm slightly put-off by the all-black Filco look.  I can't say why, but I think it looks cheap; it might have something to do with the fact that the Filco keycaps are pretty flimsy, literally half as thin as the SGI keycaps.

To accommodate this, I put on a mix of SGI/Filco keys.  The mix was determined by necessity (none of the SGI keys would fit on the bottom row, and the SGI CapsLock key wouldn't fit as well), and aesthetics (while the SGI shift keys would've fit, I thought the Filco ones look better, given that I'm constrained by some of the surrounding keys needing to be black).  I think I like it, and that the mix of key styles isn't too tacky.



Step 8:  Test/Evaluate.

So far, so good.  I did some continuity testing during the soldering process, to make sure I wasn't screwing up, but you never know.  Some of the keys are less-trivial to test (e.g., "Print Screen", function keys), at least on a Mac, but so far it seems to have been a successful procedure.  (While I wasn't tracking, it probably took 4-5 hours total.)

And I love the feel of the switches.  I'm now totally gooey over this keyboard.

Update:  for testing I used the Unix command line utility "xev".  It works great, even with the bizarro keys (e.g., "Pause", "Scroll Lock").

Step 9:  Repeat steps 4 through 8 with the other keyboard.

This leaves me with one for home and another for work.  After all, the best things come in pairs.  Like Stormbringer and Mournblade.

[wellington1869]

megarat that board looks fantastic. nice job! (esp on the soldering!).
one question - what switches did the filcos come with originally? (I dont know filcos well enough to decipher the code in the name...)

[bigpook]

Nice work but if I read it right you said the filco with white xm's felt 'light'
wow, and to me they felt balky. I can't imagine what real white alps must be like. I would need a small hammer to get the key to click : )

[ironcoder]

Beautiful job, congrats!

[lam47]

That is stunning! Now where did you get that SGI again?

[wellington1869]

megarat, if the filcos had XM's to begin with, was it not possible to simply swap the sliders and upper housing instead of soldering? I guess you wanted to repalce the XM's with the bigfoots.

[o2dazone]

That tricolor board looks fantastic!
Also amazing work on the soldering

[megarat]

My question is if you have any tricks to opening up the case.

I see one screw under a label - any tricks to getting that label off? What did you use to pop the tabs?? Extra points if you have a method that Majestouch wouldn't be able to detect (that little warranty thing....).

No extra points for me ... it would be impossible to open the case without getting to the screw beneath the label, and that label is one of the self-destructing types designed to indicate whether it had been tampered with.  So ... unless you can find some more of those labels (and they do look generic, so this is possible), then I think you're crossing the Rubicon.

For opening the case:  first, you need to remove that screw.  Then you need to carefully open the snapped-together case.  Myself, I carefully pried it open with a butter knife.  There are four tabs, each on the front and back (eight total), that hold the top and bottom case-halves together.  I started with the back, carefully inserted the blade of the knife in about the center, and moving carefully in a chosen direction until I found the tabs and popped them free.  Then reinsert and repeat with the other direction.  Then repeat with the front of the case, but more carefully, since it's thinner, and with the back tabs popped there's greater tension.

[megarat]

megarat, if the filcos had XM's to begin with, was it not possible to simply swap the sliders and upper housing instead of soldering? I guess you wanted to repalce the XM's with the bigfoots.

I'm not sure ... the message I took away from the original thread was that the mechanisms couldn't be swapped out w/o soldering.  That said, I never tried.

These are original (not simplified) Alps, so there are a lot of parts.  Replacing the mechanisms individually sounds pretty laborious.

[watduzhkstand4]

wow nice bigfoots you got there. The color scheme after the key swap looks kinda like a HHKB.

[lal]

Great mod, megarat.  I'd like all black keys better though.

[megarat]

A quick update:  I finished the process with the second board last night and it went smoothly.  Knowing what I was doing, and not having stupid equipment problems, it only took around three hours total, maybe less.

After complete disassembly and reassembly of a keyboard, you're posed with an interesting problem:  how do you know that all the keys work?  Merely typing in a text editor isn't a thorough test, as some of the keys don't have obvious responses, like the function keys, and those bizarro keys in the neighborhood of "Pause" and "Scroll Lock".

It turns out that the Unix command-line utility "xev" works great for this.  It comes with Linux, Mac OS X, and Solaris out of the box, and probably others.  Just point the mouse at the little window that comes up, and whenever you press a key, details appear in the terminal window, including (the important part) the identity of the key being pressed.  It's pretty slick, it even works for the modifier keys.

[lal]

The showkey command does something similar at the console on Linux.