Restored Northgate Omnikey Ultra, before and after pics

[gmcenroe]

I purchased this Northgate Omnikey Ultra keyboard on ebay from a seller in Portland Oregon. I removed all the keycaps, cleaned them in efferdent , followed by oxiclean bleach, rinsed dried. The faceplate was somewhat yellowed, not evident from the before pictures. Did a two day oxiclean soak in sunlight, removed most of the yellowing. Cleaned the grey metal switch plate which was filthy and returned to original condition. See before and after pictures below:

Only issues remain, the scroll lock light does not turn on, key works, ordered replacement light from Northgate repair off internet along with alternate caps lock and Alt keys for standard key layout. the "i" key tends to repeat on occasion, not sure how to fix this problem. I have some replacement ALPS keyswitches should I need them. Otherwise very happy with this beast of a keyboard.

Glenn

[opensecret]

Your board is an Ultra T (the Ultra has a few more keys, including the mysterious "Omni" key that doesn't do anything; there's also the oddly named Ultra Plus, which could have been the Ultra Minus -- it's the same as the Ultra except it doesn't have the top row function keys).  I've got 3 Omnikeys, but I've never seen one with keys as dirty as in your before pictures.   You did a great job cleaning it up.

Personally, I think one of the best features of the Omnikeys is the left-side modifiers as they are on your board. I've never understood why IBM changed that part of the layout, but I get that most people have got accustomed to the now-standard layout.   (The color coding of the legends on your Ctrl, Shift and Alt keys, by the way, aligns with templates that WordPerfect used to supply for keyboard shortcuts.)

Whenever I need help solving an issue with the Northgates, I get in touch with Bob Tibbetts at Northgate Computer Repair.  If he can't solve it, probably no one can. 

[chyros]

Nice board, arguably the best of the Northgates. If you transplant the I switch or even just the switchplate it should fix the problem if blowing some air through it doesn't fix it.

[invariance]

Nicely cleaned up.
The $64,000 question is, how does it feel?

[gmcenroe]

Thanks for all of the comments. Yes it is the Ultra inverted T model. After typing for a while the repeating I key fixed itself. I had blown compressed air through all the switches to remove any dust before I put the keycaps back on. I have some spare white ALPS key switches should I need to replace them and got some parts from Bob Tibbets, including the normal Control, Caps lock, Alt key layout. I still need to determine the problem with the scroll lock key light. It does not look burned out, need to get the voltmeter out and do some more tests. The keyboard looks and feels great. I will use this keyboard with the new computer I have plans to build. For now I was using it on a Linux system. The left function keys do pull up some menues in the Linux word processor, having fun with it.

Glenn

[gmcenroe]

Update on this keyboard, I finally hooked it up to my ibm laptop to test the scroll key, and it works fine under windows. I guess Linux OS there was some problem with that key. All keys work fine including the I key.

[nightdriver]

linux tends not to show the scroll lock LED anyway.  beautiful keyboard other than that bigass enter.  just feel like it's such a waste of space.

[ander]

Nice—way to go! These are among the most solid Alps boards ever built.