Hello everyone!
In the past few days I've restored a Reynolds + Reynolds rebranded Wyse ASCII keyboard I found relatively cheaply online.
It uses Vintage Cherry MX Blacks (The PCB is dated as 1985) with thin doubleshot ABS keycaps.
It also has a monstrous 10u spacebar that looks absolutely ridiculous.
There's a Teensy 2.0 wired up inside using a guide from Scott Paladin (
https://www.scottpaladin.com/home/2018/3/28/wyse-ascii-terminal-keyboard-project-n)
And code from this user on DT (
https://deskthority.net/workshop-f7/wyse-ascii-teensy-tmk-t19298.html)
Here's the process I went through to clean this thing up.
How I received it.
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Keycaps removed.
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My first round of cleaning was a hard scrubbing with rubbing alcohol. That got a lot of the dirt and grime off.
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My second round for removing the big smudges is the baking soda and moist paper towel technique. The baking soda acts as an abrasive and makes quick work of scuffs.
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Then I realized there was rust near one of the switches after cleaning the mounting plate. Luckily this was an easy fix by desoldering one switch and removing the evil rust with some steel wool. I just covered it up with some black sharpie because I'm lazy
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After this whole process I decided it would be fun to convert this to USB. This was a seriously frustrating experience due to never doing this before, but it worked out in the end and now I have a beautiful 33 year old keyboard.
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This log was typed using this Wyse
Overall this was a fun experience and I'm excited to try again in the future.
Thanks for checking this out! Feel free to ask questions below.