deskthority

So, if some time ago I kind of complain that here in Spain is quite a night mare to find any mechanical keyboard (that's when I bought my beloved and fantastic Northgate Omnikey 101), today out of the blue, came a friend of mine and gave me an Olivetti KDB 2812 manufactured by Cherry and with Cherry MY black switches.
The thing seems quite unused, yet it was partially dissembled (the plastic case was not entirely clamped together). It had some dust, but nothing dramatic, so I opened it and cleaned it with an old toothbrush. Also cleaned the key caps and the case.
However when I plugged in, nothing at all happened, electronically seems dead. So before touching anything, I would like to ask for your opinion.
PS2 PCB has written the reference: 601-1602 (Rev.:01) CHERRY. The join between the cable and the board seems a bit deteriorate, and a bit like if someone already attempted to repair it. The connectors of the membrane don't look great either, but I think they are still functional.
Tomorrow I'll solder again the cables to the board and test if there's continuity and so on. Somewhere I have a Teensy so... If the old board decides to not to work i can replace it with the Teensy (never done this before, but seems rather easy).
I guess I could have wait till have done the above tests, but I kinda wanted to brag a little that I just got a free keyboard (one that I'm sure Chyros would "love" as you can clearly see when he talks about MX Blacks and Cherry MY )

Hang on a moment, are those cherry Dyesub caps?

If so, wow, those are nice.
I don't have any help for getting it working though, sorry.

if you are unable to get the OG controller working again you could connect the membranes up to a teensey or something and get it working that way

You can replace this with the G80 chili pcb.

ZedTheMan wrote: ↑

27 Sep 2019, 06:12

Hang on a moment, are those cherry Dyesub caps?

If so, wow, those are nice.
I don't have any help for getting it working though, sorry.

I would say that they are not, judging from the font. Olivetti was known to have used someone else for their dyesubbing at one point.

t8c wrote: ↑

27 Sep 2019, 13:13

You can replace this with the G80 chili pcb.

I personally would not recommend doing so, if you want to use switches made by Cherry. The holes for the PCB mount pins are much too big to be used with cherry switches, so they will immediately fall out.

If you want to use a Chili pcb, stick with gateron switches.

ZedTheMan wrote: ↑

27 Sep 2019, 06:12

Hang on a moment, are those cherry Dyesub caps?

If so, wow, those are nice.
I don't have any help for getting it working though, sorry.

I don't think so, but I'm still not sure. I'll tell you when I know.

they aren't Cherry made, that's for sure

They're the Olivetti dyesubs from an unknown manufacturer. MX mount, but stabilised keys aren't compatible with regular MX stabilisers.

Well just a little update, I replaced both ceramic capacitors since they were shorted. The new ones didn't made the trick, wich make sense since it seems like this board suffered an overvoltage at some point and presumably not only damaged the caps but also the main controller itself.
Also, I thought I had uploaded pictuers of the keycaps off and turned around since it got some discussion, but obviously I didn't, so here they go. And no, still haven't looked at who manufactured them or anything, I didn't have the time to do so.

Last update to this post. Thanks to @Mattelec who donated a functioning Cherry controllerd board, I colud get the keyboard to work. As you may have already deduced, I just changed the controller board for a working one.