I've posted the finished product around a bit lately, but wanted to put together a quick build log for the process I went through in restoring an old
Zenith 100-1860 AT.
Here's what she looked like when she first arrived:
And the finished product:
I've dubbed her "Donatello" for obvious reasons
I got her from Bob at northgate-keyboard-repair.com which I believe a few people around here are familiar with. The board looked like it was in good condition, Bob claimed to have done some basic cleaning of it, but most importantly it was a working AT with all of the keys. I think I may have paid a bit too much for it, but whatever. My goal was to see what all of the hype surrounding Green SKCL ALPs was, as I love me some linears.
When I recieved it, the switches seemed relatively unremarkable, and I was concerned they were dirty and not great representatives of the SKCL hype. Or maybe it really was all hype? To find out, I decided to completely strip and clean the board including the switches. These boards have a *ridiculous* amount of ping as well, so I aimed to try and cure that as completely as possible. I've had a lot of luck lubing springs in my Filco to get rid of ping, so I decided to do that here too. So I began disassembly.
Nice and grimy. For a "restored" keyboard it sure is dirty... not sure how I feel about that, but I'm not going to point fingers. This is 100% how it looked as unpacked from being shipped.
As I've done with my Model M and Model F, I was planning to sand the plate down and paint it anyway, so really my main concern was just that it worked and had all of the necessary parts, which is did.
It's got a great single-layer PCB, my first (and only) keyboard with one.
Next was desoldering and disassembling the switches. I gave the cases and sliders a bath in denture tabs and a thorough rinsing, then after drying got to lubing the ends of the springs before reassembling them.
I broke some small tabs off of a handful of them, the small wings on the bottom half of the case. Their plastic was very brittle and I think most were fractured slightly when being removed from the plate, but they don't seem to have affected them in a major way.
Next was sanding and painting the plate. I had trouble finding a nice shade of purple, Rustoleum doesn't seem to make any deep purple colors, only bright "OSHA Purple", but I found a similar product by Krylon that I thought I'd try.
I always try and match up the colors I use to be a nice compliment to the rest of the board. I liked the idea of purple complimenting the Green SKCL sliders, and it just so happened that JD started his purple MX and ALPs GeekHack key group buy. The timing couldn't have been better!
It turned out decently, but you can see by the spacebar there's some uneven spots. I'm not completely sure if it was the Krylon, my surface prep, or my painting technique, but overall I considered it good enough. You can't really make out those kinds of details when the board is assembled anyways
For this board I wanted to try something a little different. To try and further reduce the ridiculous amount of ping, I originally planned to put shelf liner underneath the PCB to reduce vibrations like I've done on my Filco in the past and others have done frequently. But I didn't really like how I had to cut the shelf liner to fit the angled plate, and it never seemed like a great solution because too much would cause some concerning tightness in fitting the case together, but too little would probably not be very effective.
So I decided to take a page out of the Model F's book and put foam between the plate and PCB. To do so I used the plate as a stencil and cut out holes for each switch with an exacto knife. I had leftover neoprene foam from my Model F restoration which seems to be the perfect thickness, and the single-layer PCB means there aren't many components on the side of the board that faces the plate.
It really does seem to have fit perfectly and the board reassembled without a hitch.
As a nice bonus, avoiding filling the case with stuffing preserved the flex afforded by the plate being mounted to the top of the plastic case. There's a nice bit of give that I think really compliments the SKCL Green's very suble tactility, almost like an extremely (and I mean extremely) subtle version of polycarb-mounted MX Clears.
Overall I'm extremely pleased with the way the board turned out. The scratchiness that was present on the switches prior to cleaning seems to have gone away for the most part, though it might benefit from a dry lube in the future; the nice thing about ALPs is they can be opened without desoldering! I think it's a great example of the strengths of SKCL switches, they feel really great and are a nice change from linear MX which is all I'd had experience with before for linears. The keyboard also has a great sound to it, the caps aren't super thick, but they make a very satisfying plastic-y sound. It reminds me a lot of what typing sounds like in The Talos Principle, if you're a fan of puzzle games like me
Big thanks to E3E for hooking me up with a perfect black XT label, and thanks for reading!
