I was perusing Craigslist, and spotted an NEC Spinwriter printing terminal, basically a more modern teletype. After some cleaning and oiling, it works great!
![NEC Spinwriter terminal, with Honeywell SD hall effect keyboard 251328-0](https://geekhack.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=2gthhnqf9f6347547kd5rbmkn7b2fnnp&action=dlattach;topic=108525.0;attach=251329;image)
When I typed on it the first time, I was surprised how nice the keyboard was. No wonder... it has a Honeywell / Microswitch SD hall effect keyboard!
![NEC Spinwriter terminal, with Honeywell SD hall effect keyboard 251330-1](https://geekhack.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=2gthhnqf9f6347547kd5rbmkn7b2fnnp&action=dlattach;topic=108525.0;attach=251331;image)
![NEC Spinwriter terminal, with Honeywell SD hall effect keyboard 251332-2](https://geekhack.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=2gthhnqf9f6347547kd5rbmkn7b2fnnp&action=dlattach;topic=108525.0;attach=251333;image)
Converting the ASCII interface to USB was a nice Sunday project. The keys on the left have dedicated wires on the connector, and don't generate strobe pulses. I set up Break as a modifier to give curly braces with the bracket keys, page up / down with the line feed key, and mac cmd+space for the Escape key. Local turns the clicker on / off. Auto Linefeed changes the number pad into a T nav, with 5 being up. Local, Uppercase, and Auto Linefeed are all latching, as it the caps lock key.
![NEC Spinwriter terminal, with Honeywell SD hall effect keyboard 251334-3](https://geekhack.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=2gthhnqf9f6347547kd5rbmkn7b2fnnp&action=dlattach;topic=108525.0;attach=251335;image)
Most of the keycaps with white plastic have yellowed. They did this on the underside too, so it doesn't seem like just UV exposure.
A friend suggested using straight OxyClean to whiten the plastic. After some tests to be sure it wouldn't damage the gray plastic, I got this result after ~2 hours of sun time:
![NEC Spinwriter terminal, with Honeywell SD hall effect keyboard 251336-4](https://geekhack.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=2gthhnqf9f6347547kd5rbmkn7b2fnnp&action=dlattach;topic=108525.0;attach=251337;image)
I've put the keyboard back in the terminal for now. The terminal works perfectly, it's kind of a hoot to get on IRC on a printer.
Thanks!
-Jason