Sticky keys on NOS Northgate OmniKey Plus

[enrique.aliaga]

Hello guys,

A few years ago I acquired a NIB Northgate OmniKey Plus for 200 bucks on eBay. It was manufactured in 1989 and comes with Alps SKCM White switches. Needless to say, I freaking love the feel of this keyboard. Having never tried Blue Alps (they are so scarce and expensive these days), this is the next best thing on the clicky Alps world.

I'm ashamed to admit that the keyboard has been mostly on storage all this time, and only a few weeks ago I decided to use it as my daily driver (mainly because I'm now working from home due to the coronavirus and can afford to use such a loud keyboard at work).

I have one big problem, though: Some keys are sticky, not in the sense that the keycap actually remains pressed down, but in the sense that it repeats itself indefinitely until I hit it again. This doesn't happen all too often, so I can still use the keyboard as a daily driver, but when it happens it is really really annoying. I haven't noticed any pattern in particular. It seems to affect any key randomly: an alpha key, the space bar, the Enter key, the Backspace, the "~ `" key that sits on the bottom row, etc.

What I have also noticed is that sometimes the keyboard will miss some of my key presses. Say I'm typing out at a relatively fast pace, and I look at my screen, I'll notice that some letters are missing. Lke ths. This doesn't happen all too often, either, but often enough to be bothersome.

If memory serves right, this keyboard has presented this issues ever since I got it in 2017, so it's not something that has developed over time in these last two years. It was like this when I acquired it.

What could possibly be going wrong and, especially, how could I go about fixing it? I really enjoy using this board, its NOS White Alps have truly amazing feel, tactility and sound (oh, the sound!), but it's quite annoying in its current state.

P.S.: The keyboard was immaculately clean when I got it, so no way this is due to dust. As said, the whole thing was NIB.

P.S. 2: The cable I'm using is not the original. I had to buy a male PS/2 to male PS/2 cable from Amazon, and connect it to my computer using an active PS/2 to USB adapter.

Here's a picture of the keyboard, for what it's worth:

[ZedTheMan]

Your active ps/2 to usb adapter, would it happen to be a blue cube? Those have given me nothing but trouble on my northgates. To be honest, your best bet is probably to make a tmk adapter with the ibmpc_usb firmware (no longer recommending soarers due to a lack of support). It works perfectly on all of my xt and AT/PS2 boards. https://github.com/tmk/tmk_keyboard/tre ... /ibmpc_usb
It's made physically the same as a soarers.
If you want to rock your omnikey to the best of its capabilities, this is what I recommend.

[enrique.aliaga]

Your active ps/2 to usb adapter, would it happen to be a blue cube?

No, it's not a blue cube. It's an active PS/2 to USB converter that I got alongside an IBM Model M that I bought from eBay. Here is a picture of the converter:

active_converter.jpg (1.59 MiB) Viewed 1556 times

To be honest, your best bet is probably to make a tmk adapter with the ibmpc_usb firmware

I'm a programmer and know pretty much nothing about hardware and electronics. Not sure I would be able to make a converter myself. I've found that user hasu sells TMK converters on GeekHack (https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=72052.0). I will try to source one from him/her.

no longer recommending soarers due to a lack of support

Just curious... what do you mean by lack of support? I was thinking about getting a Soarer's converter for my IBM Model M.

Thanks a lot for the recommendation and leading me to a potential solution.

[Polecat]

Something about the blue cubes and other "cheap" converters causes them to miss scan codes on some keyboards. I had a Radio Shack dongle type that did the same thing, on the same subset of keyboards. You'll get a "typematic" stuck key effect if the converter misses the release code. That's a converter problem, not a keyboard problem. I never figured out why it happened, but I bought a Soarers converter from Orihalcon on ebay a few years back, and it has worked flawlessly on every keyboard I've tried it on, including all of my Northgates. Money well spent in my estimation.

[snacksthecat]

Just click "no" next time.



I'll see myself out...

[ZedTheMan]

Your active ps/2 to usb adapter, would it happen to be a blue cube?

No, it's not a blue cube. It's an active PS/2 to USB converter that I got alongside an IBM Model M that I bought from eBay. Here is a picture of the converter:

active_converter.jpg

To be honest, your best bet is probably to make a tmk adapter with the ibmpc_usb firmware

I'm a programmer and know pretty much nothing about hardware and electronics. Not sure I would be able to make a converter myself. I've found that user hasu sells TMK converters on GeekHack (https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=72052.0). I will try to source one from him/her.

no longer recommending soarers due to a lack of support

Just curious... what do you mean by lack of support? I was thinking about getting a Soarer's converter for my IBM Model M.

Thanks a lot for the recommendation and leading me to a potential solution.

Ah, yes, those are also a common commercial converter, which are probably around the same level as the blue cubes, but could be better. Given how finnicky some keyboards can be with converters even using the same protocol, I still reckon that's your issue.
Soarer has been MIA for.... some years now. The software is essentially dead in the water as it is closed source and efforts to reverse engineer and make open source haven't gone forward since permission could not be obtained. TMK is open source and is maintained and updated. Hasu actually is the primary contributor to these firmwares. You can certainly buy one of his converters from him to support his work directly, but he may or may not have the one you want in stock and they can be somewhat pricey, (you'd be wanting the ps/2 one, not sure if that would support the ibmpc_usb firmware that would allow conversion of more keyboards).

It actually is not too much effort to make one of these converters. All you need is a multimeter, an arduino pro micro or teensy 2.0, and the ability to solder in around four wires from the arduino/teensy (There are through holes, very easy soldering work) to a female ps/2 socket) To support more keyboard/cables it would also need a resistor between the power and data wires, (to "pull up" the signal from data to be stronger).
I promise you, it seems daunting at a glance but you can do it even as a first time soldering experience.