Ever since Ricecar posted his amazing G86 deal, I have been looking for a similar "scoop" to project my name into the halls of geekhack fame. This may not as significant in magnitude (or as lucrative in resale) but it seems to be quite a nice, unique KB find.
Background: Desko is a retailer of keyboards primarily aimed at Airline check in, cruise line check in. On my way back from hawaii, to my wife's chagrin, I was checking out the keyboards at check in / at the terminals to see who made them. American Airlines seems to use Desko keyboards which appear to be OEM cherry keyboards, some of them have trackpoints on them.
Back home, doing some google searches for desko keyboards, I found this tasty auction on ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/DESKO-MOS-5023-UP-KEYBOARD-USED-4-AIRPORT-CHECK-IN_W0QQitemZ150354249772QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPCA_Mice_Trackballs?hash=item2301cfc82c#ht_4909wt_958
The keyboard is a desko "MOS 5023 UP" keyboard used for airline check in. Look at the layout, it's almost just like itlnstln's prior object of desire the G80-1800 (now he's a HHKB fan!) except the spacing of the keypad and arrow keys is closer. In fact it is almost exactly like the ricecar SPOS except there are full sized tab/capslock/shift/enter/backspace keys. Oh, and the tilda key is in the correct spot, left of the 1 key.
Here is a picture a similar (not exactly the same) keyboard on the desko website:
The keys appear to be stickered on like the deck keyboards: see this picture, the seller was nice enough to send me pictures of the switch (he states the stem is black despite it's brownish appearance)
From what I can see, the BMOS 5023 UP appears to use cherry black PCB mounted switches so you can do a switch swap to your hearts desire from other PCB mounted switches.
It has a trackpoint too. (which who knows how well it will function)
Accodring to my eyeball measurement this keyboard should only be about 14.5inches in length, which is almost the same size as a filco tenkeyless. Except this has a numpad
Here is a discussion about a similar model E-BMOCS 4013 UP SAB from kbdmania: (this seems to use cherry blue switches)
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ko&u=http://www.kbdmania.net/xe/%3Fmid%3Dreview%26page%3D2%26document_srl%3D1227083&ei=8WmhS8jrJoSssgPP-_3IAw&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAcQ7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Ddesko%2Bkeyboard%2Bkbdmania%2Bbmos%26hl%3DenFinally, the punch line to this all: Got mine for $45 buy it now including shipping. And there are only 3 left for purhcase at this time. Please only buy one, be a good geekhack citizen!
-----
For your reference, here is a another desko keyboard which does not use MX switches:
Here is a similar branded keyboard the Desko ML 4008 UPB on ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Desko-ML-4008-UPB-Keyboard-w-Magnetic-Card-Reader_W0QQitemZ200437593130QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPCA_Mice_Trackballs?hash=item2eab02f42aThis one uses cherry MY switches (see attachment)
