Hi all-
I just got some vintage boards recently and I really enjoy them. I'm kind of curious about what are the boards that are widely available, not too expensive (<$150), and type pretty nicely. Anything like M0116, Model M, and Model F?
Bonus question, what's the strangest thing you have ever seen when opening the case of a vintage keyboard?
Thanks!
Anything with Alps SKCM, of most varieties. You can find boards with white alps pretty commonly for $40-80, including some of the popular ones like Omnikeys and the FK-2000. Be wary of visibly dirty boards, as Alps switches can become gritty easily. Cleaning them is a process, and may not guarantee a return to perfect feel.
I, personally, think that anything with NEC blue ovals is nice, and boards with those can sell for very little.
Although I own too many of them, and probably haven't seen the end of that, I'm actually not really a fan of the feel of membrane buckling spring keyboards, like the Model M. I would honestly prefer a good modern clicky switch. If you would like them, their prices have come down as Model F prices have gone up. You can often find perfectly working boards for $40-60 on Ebay with a little digging. Model Fs, you will not find for less than $150 very easily unless you find a reasonable price on an F XT, which I personally would not pay more than $70 or $80 for, and the layout is just a little too jarring for most people, including myself, and I routinely type on AT layout boards without issue.
The Unitek K151L is a cool and fun AT board, and very well made if you ignore the construction of the PCB within. You can find them for cheap (like $30 sometimes, if you haggle), and they come with "vintage" Cherry MX blacks, if that's your thing. If not, you can swap in whatever modern MX-like switch you like. I put box jades in one of mine.
I would stay away from Futaba. They're interesting, but not worth the effort. They lose their tactility over the years and, knowing this from experience, the tricks you can find on Deskthority to try to revive them may linearise them. I haven't found any way to reverse that without maybe cutting the switches open, which are held together with plastic rivets, so I'm not sure what the best way to assemble them once more may be, if even feasible.
I picked up a terminal clone board from the early 1980s and somebody had taken the trouble to open the board, cut some traces, and run jumper wires to completely bypass a few switches. I haven't gotten that board working at all with a modern computer, so I'm not sure why that may have been.