Sounds like they're going to be awesome keyboards to use. I actually just recently got to use Salmons for the first time (thanks to a gift of an old AEK from a friend) and I think they feel pretty awesome, and this is coming from someone pretty fond of his clicky switches.
Can only imagine the Greens would be that much nicer. And heh, I wasn't talking about saving a switch for any of us... it's your haul, and what a haul it is!
I meant "don't make the mistake of harvesting all the switches." Try to keep at least one nice board for the collection. I just can't bear to see good old battleships scrapped.
I'll have to see if someone can help me reverse engineer the boards as they use some kind of funky protocol that does not work with PCs. Not sure if XT, but I'm thinking it's proprietary. Not sure!
Oh yeah, I'm spending my time retrobrighting the boards as we speak. One down, another almost done, and these were the early models (1990, 1991) that were surprisingly less yellowed than the later models (1996, 1997).
I'm going to soak the retaining tabs and other sensitive plastic parts of the board in silicone spray and have them sitting in a ziploc bag for a few days to hopefully restore some of the plasticizers, because the plastic on the 1991 board, in particular, was quite brittle. These do not use screws for case assembly at all, which is novel and really awesome--makes for a quick takedown, but because of aging plastic, it's has its downsides.
Yeah, I can't bring myself to desoldering any of them. They are all in too good of a condition to do that. What I might do instead is actually swap the top main components from one board's neons into the bottom housing of a set of Salmon alps that I have desoldered as I have determined they are exactly the same (at least with pine). Since my Orion v2 will be hotswappable, this means I can just swap them into the Orion v2 no problem, then when I want to put them back in the Docutech, I can just swap them back and put the Salmons back together.
One of the boards is an 85 + 10 (this is counting the unique top row function keys as these are pretty much all F AT layout boards) standard ISO board (with a short left shift) with US layout which seems very rare. All of the others are an 84 + 10 key US ISO with a long left shift.
Yeah, Salmon Alps imo are the closest in feel to MX Clears. Orange Alps are also very nice too.
I prefer Orange Alps to the tactile Green Alps. They're interesting, but not my favorite. I do prefer them to Brown Alps though. They have a high initial tactile point. I have my impressions on them in the thread where I posted about the discovery of them. As a discovery, they're cool, but I don't think they're worth trying to find over Orange or Salmon Alps unless you love Brown Alps.
The dyesub caps it has are awesome though. They're not black legends, but a dark dark burgundy or purple or something. It's been a bit since I looked, so I forget.
I actually find the bamboo Neon Green switches to be quite pleasant and rounded--they are probably closer to topre than any other Alps switch. I like them more than Orange SKCM, but that's just my preference. The earlier models have pine switches and feel a lot more like tactile browns. Their tactility is more pronounced than the bamboo switches. Both are very pleasant to me though and these have made me go from finding almost all tactile Alps boring, to loving them all once again.
I will admit there is probably some McRip effect due to the rarity and such of these keyboards.
Like the same reason some people swear by Nixdorf blacks.
Yep, the dyesubs are very nice. They are pretty amazing to be honest. Because these were for printing publisher systems, I'm guessing there wasn't much heavy typing done on them, so the caps are all in fantastic condition. Their little companion mice, on the contrary, are almost all shined on the sides.
Yeah, I've been waiting for ages for a package from Germany, and according to USPS it's been stuck in "We have received notice that the originating post is preparing to dispatch this mail piece" for a solid week now.
Meanwhile, the Silitek Alps board I bought from Greece sailed through customs and is making its way through the US. I don't get it.
I hope the Leading Edge gets to you okay, man. It is a fine board when it comes to build, layout, and function.