Reynolds + Reynolds Wyse ASCII keyboard Restoration

[whiffysole]

Hello everyone!
In the past few days I've restored a Reynolds + Reynolds rebranded Wyse ASCII keyboard I found relatively cheaply online.
It uses Vintage Cherry MX Blacks (The PCB is dated as 1985) with thin doubleshot ABS keycaps.
It also has a monstrous 10u spacebar that looks absolutely ridiculous.
There's a Teensy 2.0 wired up inside using a guide from Scott Paladin (https://www.scottpaladin.com/home/2018/3/28/wyse-ascii-terminal-keyboard-project-n)
And code from this user on DT (https://deskthority.net/workshop-f7/wyse-ascii-teensy-tmk-t19298.html)
Here's the process I went through to clean this thing up.

How I received it.

More

https://imgur.com/31dd82s
https://imgur.com/ImThVux
https://imgur.com/R4s8KRz

Keycaps removed.

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https://imgur.com/o05UyHL
https://imgur.com/PMIxi4c

My first round of cleaning was a hard scrubbing with rubbing alcohol. That got a lot of the dirt and grime off.

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https://imgur.com/6xPhDf1
https://imgur.com/zY2hWTQ

My second round for removing the big smudges is the baking soda and moist paper towel technique. The baking soda acts as an abrasive and makes quick work of scuffs.

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https://imgur.com/FV2vRIn
https://imgur.com/uFp8KGh

Then I realized there was rust near one of the switches after cleaning the mounting plate. Luckily this was an easy fix by desoldering one switch and removing the evil rust with some steel wool. I just covered it up with some black sharpie because I'm lazy

More

https://imgur.com/BU6jOEA
https://imgur.com/06SXFMH
https://imgur.com/VznYDqb

After this whole process I decided it would be fun to convert this to USB. This was a seriously frustrating experience due to never doing this before, but it worked out in the end and now I have a beautiful 33 year old keyboard.

More

https://imgur.com/wOa6pDy
https://imgur.com/jSUVVqe
https://imgur.com/XPR6mTA

This log was typed using this Wyse
Overall this was a fun experience and I'm excited to try again in the future.
Thanks for checking this out! Feel free to ask questions below.

[whiffysole]

Whoops, seems I linked the pictures wrong. That should fix it.

[OldIsNew]

Nice job!

(lol, the | is above the 1 on my current keyboard instead of ! so had to fix it!)

[OldIsNew]

I must say I'm a bit annoyed. This is a really nice keyboard project - didn't anyone else have a comment?

[whiffysole]

I must say I'm a bit annoyed. This is a really nice keyboard project - didn't anyone else have a comment?

Thanks! Yeah I'm a little frustrated no one else left a comment. Having some pointers on how to improve future projects and posts would be nice. It was fun though, definitely looking forward to my next find.

[OldIsNew]

Thanks! Yeah I'm a little frustrated no one else left a comment. Having some pointers on how to improve future projects and posts would be nice. It was fun though, definitely looking forward to my next find.

For sure don't get discouraged! I'm not sure what happened, but it seems like the GH community doesn't take much interest in vintage keyboard restorations anymore.  If you can, I  would suggest posting this at DeskThority, either in the workshop or the keyboard section - I think you might get some useful feedback there.

[invariance]

Agree on it being a nice resto job.
Got to love the pre ansi/iso layout with that “Wyse 60” and it’s funky key placements especially that ctrl/caps lock arrangement.
Obviously cntrl was used more often than Caps Lock at the time
Nice bonus having a Function key as you then have easy access to layers


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[whiffysole]

Thanks! Yeah I'm a little frustrated no one else left a comment. Having some pointers on how to improve future projects and posts would be nice. It was fun though, definitely looking forward to my next find.

For sure don't get discouraged! I'm not sure what happened, but it seems like the GH community doesn't take much interest in vintage keyboard restorations anymore.  If you can, I  would suggest posting this at DeskThority, either in the workshop or the keyboard section - I think you might get some useful feedback there.

Thanks for the feedback, I'll see about getting it up over there and updating my review after using this board for awhile.

Agree on it being a nice resto job.
Got to love the pre ansi/iso layout with that “Wyse 60” and it’s funky key placements especially that ctrl/caps lock arrangement.
Obviously cntrl was used more often than Caps Lock at the time
Nice bonus having a Function key as you then have easy access to layers


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Oh yeah, I love these old layouts. They're super fun to use and look great too
I actually am starting to prefer the swapped Ctrl and Caps keys. It's actually gotten me heavily into the UNIX layout, and my upcoming 60% build will be using my adaptation of the UNIX layout. I also really like having the delete key closer to backspace.