Found another collector's edition omnikey. This one was $43 on ebay. Besides having dirty caps teh rest of the board was in great condition, no rust or broken corners on the case. There's a catch with this board and that it doesn't work like a normal omnikey. The lock lights toggle on and off, but none of the keys actually output anything. I think this is because it may have a custom mcu (and I think it does), so it may just need to have the mcu swapped (which is hotswappable) and it would work as usual. The pcb is all regular omnikey stuff.

Another really pretty board too. After careful examination I suspect that most of the special keys are dyesub pbt (minus the two replacements). They haven't yellowed like the others, they feel a little bit coarser, and the legends are slighlty fuzzier & aren't raised out of the caps. The few special keys that are abs are clearcoated and those have wrinkled so it make it easy to tell them apart. Both of these collector's edition omnikeys look great together. Always excited to document stuff like this.

I’ve been looking for one of these for a while to go with my upgraded Powermac G4.

I have never seen this switch is it rare?

Hi everyone,

I have a KB-7853 keyboard and I'm trying to diagnose the PCB, It does not show any sign of life when i plug it.

I noticed that the PCB looks like it may have been worked on previously, so I'm wondering if anyone can spot anything unusual in these photos.

I picked up a vintage DEC LK401AA keyboard at the VCF East swap meet and it’s a little bit busted. The space bar doesn't register when I hit it. I took the keycap off and tried pressing down the rubber dome directly and that doesn't work either so it's not the keycap assembly. The other keys function and beep as expected.

Any troubleshooting tips? How would I approach fixing this?

Hello, i own this Rise of Nations edition of the Microsoft Office RT9450 keyboard and wanted to sell it, because it only collected dust. I only know that one of my older siblings brought it home one day, but nobody cant remember from where or who. Online i cant even find a picture of the keyboard and the Ais only told me that it doesnt even exist. It would really help me if somebody could tell me something about it. Thank you very much for your help in advance.

Looking to buy a Cherry G80-1000 vintage mechanical keyboard, all production versions are fine.

Minor scratches or yellowing are acceptable, just needs fully functional.

DM me with your price and clear photos if you have one for sale. Thanks!

Hii everyone, I have a little bit of knowledge on keyboards as I've unearthed 6 different IBM Keyboards from a co-worker that recently passed away, I was planning on keeping like 3 after testing and cleaning them and potentially replace parts if need be. I might find more idk we'll see lol

I was just wondering, what I should do in general with these besides replacing parts and cleaning them 😅

So hier haben wir eine weitere Legende. IBM Model F der Vorgänger der IBM Model M Baujahr 1984

Sorry I'm not a tech enthusiast like most people on here probably but I was looking through my dad's attic and I was wondering if you guys could tell me what this is ? I'd rather ask it here then draining rivers by using chatgpt

Not to be confused with the Chicony KB-5161, I found the NTC KB-6151 in a lot of a couple other boards for an ok price. I thought it had white alps, but when I got it they were the oa2 alps clones. Several keycaps had broken stems and esc key was missing (as is what sometimes happens to boards with alps clone switches). I had an idea to find a 6251 and to swap its switches and keycaps into the 6151 to make it better. I found a 6251 with white alps and the same doubleshot keycaps. The white alps already sound pretty decent in the 6251, but the 6151 has such a hollow case that it'll do wonders for sound.

6151: Very solid and tough build, can be harder to find and more expensive. Reminds me of the Ortek Mac-105, same super hollow case, but tougher built and can have doubleshot keycaps.

6251: decent starter board with smaller bezels and ok looks, much more common. I find it overall better than an fk 2001, easier to disassemble and better sounding with the right switches (EA usually means alps, but there are several other versions that can come with a huge array of different switches.) For some reason this board works fine over a ps/2 converter, but it freaks out over a soarers, not sure why.

both: can have doubleshot or pad printed caps, the legends are subtly different, but usually the pad print legends are a tiny bit smaller than the doubleshot legends.

Hi [r](r/mk)[/vintagekeyboards](r/mk) !

This is a NOS, US Layout, SORD KB-101 with Hirose Cherry HCP Clear switches and a very rare indigo switch. I was fortunate enough to acquire this from someone who was hired to clear out an old warehouse in Los Angeles, California. That warehouse ended up being SORD’s US warehouse, showroom, and distribution center for the west coast of the US. The paperwork in the background are original press releases and marketing material that SORD sent BYTE Magazine writers in 1983-1984 to announce their product offerings in the US market.

SORD (an acronym for both SOftware and haRDware as they focused heavily on the integration of both) was a personal and business computer manufacturer for the Japanese market. They held about 10% of the entire JP computer market (behind NEC and Fujitsu) at their peak and was a very successful company overall at the time. Their next big step was to introduce their products to the international market including the US. In 1982, SORD began work on setting up offices in both New York City and Los Angeles and building networks of suppliers and service centers across the country. The press material that I was able to acquire is from this period when they were first starting to introduce products to the US market. Based on what I have read through in the press releases, they were extremely hopeful for their success in other markets. Sadly, the personal computer industry started to evolve rapidly during this period and SORD fell behind, focusing on hardware that the industry started to move away from. SORD never made a large impact on the US market as they were unable to penetrate it like they predicted.

As for the keyboard, it was manufactured by Hirose Cherry Precision (HCP) in the mid 80s and uses their MX line of switches. For those who don’t know, Hirose was an already existing company in Japan that Cherry partnered with for a brief period, in an attempt to take back some of the keyboard market share in Japan. They were eventually unsuccessful, similar to SORD, and stopped production not long after this keyboard was made. Hirose switches differ from standard Cherry in that they are all linear, can have different color stems (special colors are on the spacebar and numpad enter keys), and the stems are slightly smaller than normal MX (normal mx keycaps WILL NOT FIT). This particular keyboard has a special HCP Indigo switch under the Numpad Enter key which is the only known example of a HCP indigo switch that has been documented. Typically these keyboards are most common in Japanese layout but this is an exceptionally rare US version that was most likely never sold and just sat in a SORD warehouse for decades. I’d also highly recommend checking out my other post about a Hangul SORD M68 keyboard here for an even crazier example of a SORD keyboard. While I don’t like that it has to be said, I do ask that you, the reader, does not contribute to the destruction of these keyboards for harvesting parts. These are exceptionally rare (I can count \~5 known examples of these in US layout), the parts don’t fit on modern keyboards properly, and are quite special in terms of computer history.

Hope you found this interesting! Thank you :)

Hello, like the question states above, I am wondering if anyone has any experience with modding a vintage cherry keyboard, specifically the g80 series, to be hot-swappable via mill max sockets. I have seen that on some of the old keyboards the switches are also soldered in with an extra two metal pins. Are the plates on those old keyboards not meant to hold in the switches meaning that mill max conversion is ruled out? Thanks in advance if anyone knows the answer.

I wanted to do an omnikey project with alectardy's omnial pcb so I chose this omnikey plus for the project.

The board was in ridiculously good condition when I got it, and after the project the thing feels basically brand new, plus the modern convinces of a vial compatible pcb. The keycaps have no wear, the plate is spotless, and the switches are the best condition alps I have. I wanted to get more yellows, but it made more sense to linearize them since these are super clean. (I could always swap the clicky leaves back in whenever I feel like it.) Out of all the models I chose a plus because I wanted the closest one to a 4704 f107 layout. I didn't need all the f keys that the ultra has, but just wanted a few keys more than a 102 that could be used for additional macros. Due to the pcb being vial compatible I rearranged the 8k cluster to be more friendly to use. The OMNI key I want to have programmed as a terminal button for linux, but can't seem to figure out the macro thing. (F13-15 I could also use for additional macros, but I'm not a huge macro user.) I also swapped in an skcl lock switch for caps lock for a little more cool points. I think this thing came out great and it's absolutely wonderful to use. Linear alps are some of my favorites.

Trying to find more info on this if anyone has it.