geekhack
geekhack Marketplace => Great Finds => Topic started by: jacobolus on Thu, 08 January 2015, 20:58:59
-
Rubber dome but Alps-compatible PBT dyesub keycaps. Unlike on the AEK, the F keys here don’t have rotated stems. All the keycap shapes are more like standard OEM-ish profile than the old Apple Alps boards.
Most auctions for these are for the ANSI-layout version, so the ISO layout one is kinda interesting. Also, most of these boards are the later made in Thailand NMB version with printed ABS caps that aren’t useful for anything else.
Seller is in the Netherlands, so shipping isn’t too cheap to the US, but someone in Europe might like these caps:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/131398976856
-
It has been my experience, having a half-dozen or so of the "Design" keyboards, that the early ones (with detachable cables) have the Alps-compatible key caps, and the later ones with attached cables have different caps.
That is my observation only, I don't have any further details.
-
You want the ones made in the Czech Republic or in Mexico, not the ones made in Thailand or China. If there’s a good picture of the full back but not good enough to read the country of origin you can judge by the screw holes in the back case. This particular one also has a yellowed spacebar (ABS) but unyellowed other keys (which are PBT dyesubs).
These are standard thick PBT Alps dyesubs, the same keycap shapes as you’d find on Alps dyesub boards by Zenith, Texas Instruments, IBM, SGI, Dell, Xerox, etc. board. The keycap shapes are a bit different than the ones on earlier Apple boards. One notable feature of the ISO layout version is that ISO-layout AEKs and AEK IIs have everything shifted over by a quarter unit, making the caps hard to reuse on other keyboards: this one is pretty much standard ISO layout.
Someone with an ISO layout Matias Tactile Pro, for example, would probably really enjoy these keycaps. (The option keys on the M2980 are 1.25u instead of 1u, and the spacebar is narrower, but everything else should fit.)