As an update, the factory has shipped the prototypes and they should arrive by the middle of next week! I have ordered prototype split right shift keyboards and Unicomp split right shift, regular layout, black unprinted, regular unprinted, and regular printed keys and will be testing and photographing each of the layouts.
Are there any more early bird tooling volunteers? I think we are at 10 and need to get to 15. By being an early bird tooling volunteer you not only allow the community to get their keyboards a couple months earlier, but you also allow for a first batch of keyboards to circulate among the community and maybe among reviewers and tech bloggers, which can drum up further interest in these F62/F77 keyboards as well as future Model F projects.
It looks like the early consensus across the forums is for the straight text in the logo - any other thoughts?
Everyone who wants one, please do sign the interest form if you haven't already, even if just so I can let you know when orders open (hopefully next week). Orders ship (generally, with some exceptions) in sequence of the timestamp of when the order is received. I am inspecting the units one by one so it will definitely take some time between when I receive the units and when the last order received ships out.
Melvang-pricing was settled at 50 cents per barrel and 50 cents per flipper+spring in bulk. You can only buy them during the F62/F77 group buy window starting (hopefully) next week.
raymogi I will PM all the early bird tooling donors when the time comes. I am putting together the "quality control" style label inside the keyboard and expect to put all the tooling donor user names there.
Thanks livingspeedbump. The good news is that the dot matrix printer still works after all these years. The green bar paper invoices with each order should definitely add some more vintage feel.
mashby they will be sold on my web site, which will launch when the products open (I have done extensive store testing and paypal integration testing to minimize the chance of bugs).
There will be an early bird round thanks to the tooling volunteers. For the regular round, you will have a few months to place an order, but after the deadline they will likely no longer be sold, assuming no distributors pick up the product and order some inventory. Holding inventory is very risky because even to hold 100 extra units would cost over $35,000. There is a small number of people buying a few extras because it is very likely they won't be able to find NIB units anywhere else in a few years.