Kaypro II Keyboard Restoration

[OldIsNew]

I recently obtained a Kaypro II keyboard - I just really like the look of these old boards.



I have a Kaypro 4 board with SMK J-M0404 switches - I was hoping this one might have Key Tronic foam and foil and it did.

                             


The foam and foil were in even worse shape than usual - much of the foam had literally turned to dust:

       

The board came with a bonus spider egg sac:

  

I'm getting faster at replacing the foam and foil so it's not too bad to do now, then traced out the matrix and wired up the xwhatsit:

                  


Retrobrighted the blue keys then reassembled the case and it's up and running.

         



I'm learning to do with out Alt, F keys, nav clusters and all that newfangled stuff!

[wolf]

Bloody awesome!  I love seeing these projects where old classic boards are restored to function with modern computers.  I saw "Kaypro II" in the thread title and thought "Far out!" 

Great job.  Don't worry too much about the newfangled stuff  )

[Tactile]

It's shocking to learn the switches aren't some kind of mechanical 'cause I remember those keyboards ringing like the bells of St Mary as you typed on them.

[OldIsNew]

Bloody awesome!  I love seeing these projects where old classic boards are restored to function with modern computers.

Thanks! I do love the old boards - they seem to have some character to them.

It's shocking to learn the switches aren't some kind of mechanical 'cause I remember those keyboards ringing like the bells of St Mary as you typed on them.

I guess it depends if you consider capacitive switches mechanical - which raises the question, are Model Fs mechanical?  And yes,  the board does have something of a ring to it. The metal case tends to reverberate a bit - its kind of nice I think.