Moar Cherrivetti goodness and weirdness

Grond · 01 Mar 2012, 09:43

My hunt for Olivetti keyboards made by Cherry is ongoing. So far the only model I spotted is the KBD 2812, which was made in 1990. This proved to be a specially interesting model, because apparently it's hard to find two of them that are identical. Indeed under the case of a 2812 you may find white or black cherry mys, or even vintage mx blacks. Not to mention the keycaps, which can be either blue infilled doubleshots or blue labelled dye subs with weird, previously unseen stabilizers. And all those different boards were made in a few months, between spring an summer 1990!
My guess is that Cherry had to rush the production up and just tried to supply Olivetti with anything they could, be it mx blacks or shitty mys. Or even german sets disguised in italian layout.

Enter my most recent found. This keyboard is MY blacks with dye subs. Like all the others, it seems very lightly used. But here's a catch. Do you notice the weird Q and Y? And why is the return textless, as it usually says "invio"?

And where is the handbag on this label?

Take a look at the right control. You can see a strg legend emerging from underneat! And what about that zero?

So Cherry just took a german dye sub set and overprinted the language specific keycaps with italian legends!

You can easily tell which caps are overprinted. This is quite lousy as an italian set. The good new is, the coating is coming apart on some keycaps, showing intact dye subs underneat. So if I could remove the coating from all the printed keycaps I would have a perfectly preserved german set. Any suggestions on how to do it?

EDIT: Not really. Only the two Controls and the Zero are overprinted dye subs. The rest of italian specific keycaps, as well as some random keycaps like "m" or "q", are just abs pad printed.

Gilgam · 01 Mar 2012, 11:20

Trentina tastiera : italian outside, german inside

maybe if you rub it gently ?

Grond · 01 Mar 2012, 11:30

Funny thing is, it was shipped from Sicily! Well far away from südtirol!
I can easily rub the coat with my nail without damaging the keycap underneath, but only on the few caps where the paint is already coming apart on its own. Basically this means only control and zero. But on most of the other keys, the printing is still perfect and won't rub away. Maybe I could try to boil them? PBT should resist hot water, right? But what about the legend? I don't want to discolor it.

BiNiaRiS · 01 Mar 2012, 12:04

so it looks like the font underneath is the standard cherry font then? are the keycaps underneath a different color? it looks like the coat they put on is darker. i know these didn't match any other cherry keys i had in color.

Grond · 01 Mar 2012, 12:07

I guess the coat is just dirtier, but the same color as underneath. And the modifiers always use the standard cherry font, even when the alpha keys don't.

rodtang · 01 Mar 2012, 22:05

You could try light rubbing them with some kind of light paint thinner. (Don't listen to me, I have no idea what I'm talking about.)

7bit · 01 Mar 2012, 22:09

Your images are invisible. Can you please reduce their size?

Grond · 01 Mar 2012, 22:18

Really? I can see them though. Anyway, here's the pics' urls.

http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/4044/p1000887qc.jpg
http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/4290/p1000888.jpg
http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/8646/p1000892gk.jpg
http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/3516/p1000890q.jpg
http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/1553/p1000895y.jpg

Grond · 02 Mar 2012, 09:26

rodtang wrote:You could try light rubbing them with some kind of light paint thinner.

This sounds dangerous for the plastic...

mintberryminuscrunch · 02 Mar 2012, 09:54

Use a soft "radiergummi"
edit: rubber/eraser

Kurk · 02 Mar 2012, 10:53

Grond wrote:
rodtang wrote:You could try light rubbing them with some kind of light paint thinner.
This sounds dangerous for the plastic...

Dangerous indeed. I would start with some iPrOH and maybe a toothbrush.

Grond · 02 Mar 2012, 11:29

mintberryminuscrunch wrote:Use a soft "radiergummi"
edit: rubber/eraser

This only helped to delete the pad printed legend, but didn't remove the paint coating. I'm starting to fear only some keycaps are actually dye subs overcoated, and others are blank pad printed pbts. This would make the set worthless.

EDIT: I'm now sure that the 1x keycaps are just pad printed abs. They are phisically different from dye subs (slightly taller and wider) and present a cross under the the stem, which the dyesubs lack. The form factor is identical to my double shots. I call this keyboard a lemon.

sixty · 02 Mar 2012, 18:50

They were probably re-made by a company other than Cherry directly. I was already surprised when you first showed the keys from the bottom and they had a non-standard stabilizer system. My theory is that Olivetti ordered the boards from Cherry, but decided against the order of multiple keyboards and instead used some replacement keys to create the local layouts.

This also explains why the CTRL keys are a completely non default font and randomly in caps! I am excited by your finding, thanks!

BiNiaRiS · 02 Mar 2012, 19:43

i'm comparing my set (mainly the control/alt) directly to a cherry pad printed key and they don't look similar at all. But my caps lock, both controls, both alts and the + from the numpad kind of look like there is pad that was added to the top of the key...but why would they do it to the + key? Isn't that key the same in every language?

I also noticed another difference between mine and this set. The Print Screen and Pause buttons. The text that is printed on the side of my set is in lowercase like cherry usually does, but on this new set, it's in all uppercase.

It also looks like the Z and the M match the Q and Y on your board.

Grond · 02 Mar 2012, 22:50

This is very random indeed. Take the enter key for an instance: that's not pad printed, but textless dye sub. While on the other sets, be it dye sub or double shot, the text says "invio". Later I'll post a pic to show which ones are dye subs and which pad printed.

Grond · 02 Mar 2012, 23:44

There you go. I removed all the pad printed keycaps and left the dye subs only. A pretty bastardized set, insn't it? Such a shame.

What about the keyboard cover? Do you think it's original?

BiNiaRiS · 03 Mar 2012, 01:39

That is some really odd shit, haha. How did you determine what was pad printed and what wasn't?

I'm relooking at mine and i'm pretty sure they are all dye subs. Based on your pictures it looks like the pad printed ones had a little bit different color to them. Mine are all really uniform. I even tried using a knife and gently scratching the Alt Gr and it wouldn't come off.

Grond · 03 Mar 2012, 09:01

Yes, your set is even, otherwise it would be easily noticeable!

It may not be clear from the pics, but dye subs and pad printed are actually very different if you take a close watch:
- dye subs are slightly smaller;
- they don't have a cross under the stem;
- the plastic is slightly whiter (probably some yellowing on abs keys);
- legends are aligned lower;
- pad printed legends seems to have a worse definition than the dye subs.
To see what I mean you can just compare a cherry double shot to a olivetti dye sub. Those pad printed have the same form factor ad double shots.

BiNiaRiS · 03 Mar 2012, 09:53

just checked mine and the only ones with crosses are the larger keys and they are very different so i'm in the clear

fyi, I have an NCR case with the exact same LED sticker (except it's grey instead of blue). The caps lock is blank on the sticker. No clue why they made them like that. Rollen is german though right? Which would make sense since this keyboard seems to be a Frankenstein in the worst way.

You might be able to sell what is left, haha...but I don't know what anyone would use a partial set like that for. The caps don't match anything. I've tried to match them with no luck at least. Worst case I'd take the enter key since it looks better without the Invio

Grond · 03 Mar 2012, 10:09

I guess some people may be interested in the blue esc, the f-row or the arrows. Perhaps the WASD and the 1.5 modifiers may be of some interest too. And the pad printed keys may serve as stem donors for modding.

sixty · 04 Mar 2012, 00:09

For your info, the pad printed keys are real Cherry molds, while the dye-sub ones are actually not. I think I know which company they came from too, though.

BiNiaRiS · 04 Mar 2012, 05:02

sixty wrote:For your info, the pad printed keys are real Cherry molds, while the dye-sub ones are actually not. I think I know which company they came from too, though.

I kind of assumed this. The dye subs are amazing quality. From everything I can tell, on par with Cherry's.

Grond · 04 Mar 2012, 10:32

Maybe Olivetti itself? They sure manufactured some other keyboards on their own. However it doesn't make much sense in this case, because if the keys were made in italy, odds are they wouldn't need a bunch of pad printed abs to complete italian layout!

I also believe this keyboard was made earlier than the others I found (may 1990 vs june/july 1990). So maybe the molds for italian layout weren't ready yet and they patched up the keyboard this way.