geekhack
geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: supamesican on Tue, 17 May 2016, 19:16:11
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I recently got an fk-2001, white alps clone, board in the mail yesterday. Got that sweet 90's retro look white alps clones that are almost as good as brand name, then my little brother saw it and fell in love with it. He wants a retro(80's/90's/early 2000's) mechanical clicky board to start his foray in to the wonderful world of mechanical keyboards. Only retro boards I've ever used/owned are the fk-2001 and my model f xt, so I dont know what all is out there. is $50-60 doable for a clicky retro board? windows key doesnt matter.
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Sure, plenty of options. Multiple types of Alps and buckling springs.
Also NMB Hi-Teks, SMKs, Acers, there are lots of 1980s-90s keyboards that turn up on ebay from time to time, almost always in that $30-$60 price range.
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After looking in to those, and trying my model F M and alps clones. He has narrowed it down to model M or alps/clones. Thanks man!
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Nice, no wonder he got hooked on vintage boards ^^ . The 2001 is a very cool-looking board, especially with the dust cover.
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mine came without the cover but man its almost as nice as my model M. And has windows keys
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Yeah, plenty of options. Just make sure the controller is up to date — newer PS2 boards should support key combinations with right flag keys (CTRL, SHIFT, ALT), but old don't. At least my Model M ('93 Lexmark) doesn't support them via USB converter (it doesn't work through modern PS2, probably because it hogs too much juice). Something like SHIFT+CTRL+HOME isn't important to a gamer but the lack of it makes the life of a typist miserable. You also need to test every single key because contrary to all those 10–20M keystroke ratings, individual keys on mech boards at a rate of 1–2 keys per board give out more easily. If you can solder, it doesn't matter, but if you can't and nobody can help you with it, then you're in trouble. Watch for stuck contacts too, e.g. repeating full stops (.. instead of .). Even a sturdy Model M may begin to show it after 20 years of use.
Once you inevitably start collecting old boards, make sure you don't fritter away your money on shipment costs. It's easy to overlook shipment costs as accidentals and only focus on the actual price as the amount that matters, but whether product price or shipment fee, a twenty is a twenty and a fifty is a fifty all the same. So make sure you calculate your purchasing power with allowance for shipment costs, not without.
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Every man in my family enjoys soldiering, so thats no big deal. With alps/clones I should be able to use matias switches to replace bad keys right? Not sure how to do that on an M or F, unless its just new springs..
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Every man in my family enjoys soldiering, so thats no big deal. With alps/clones I should be able to use matias switches to replace bad keys right? Not sure how to do that on an M or F, unless its just new springs..
Need spring replacements for that, but it isn't actually a big deal. A full set of springs with anvils costs like sixteen bucks. But you fix them to a board underneath. There's nothing in there like in Cherry or alps switches (simple switch and no casing, basically, and not actually truly mechanical, either, at least not in the typical sense that's totally antithetic to rubber domes).
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that seems easy enough. New springs and hammers wont be as hard as Soldering new matias switches in to my fk-2001, which itself sound be easy because its just soldering
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Lots of spare parts available for Model M keyboards, should you choose to go that route.
Not so many custom keycaps, although that might not be something at the top of the list.
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that seems easy enough. New springs and hammers wont be as hard as Soldering new matias switches in to my fk-2001, which itself sound be easy because its just soldering
IBM restoration is a mechanical exercise at the work table involving blades, drills, clamps, and screws. No soldering is involved unless you are doing something arcane such as swapping in a new controller.
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buckling spring