I got this keyboard recently and I wanted to share the restoration project on here as it was a lot of fun and I learned how to use a Teensy for this keyboard thanks to previous forums on here.
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I received the keyboard a few weeks ago and it came with Green Alps, this keyboard was the first time I ever used them and I really like them. While the keyboard was a bit dirty, the switches were actually in great condition. I cleaned them all out to make them as nice as possible and now they're damn near perfect. The keys are OG Alps doubleshots and they were very yellow and dirty but they seem to have been rarely used as the texture on all the keys was still fully intact.
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I know retrobright is a divisive topic and I don't usually like doing it, but I typing on yellow keys is an even bigger pet peeve of mine so I decided to do it on these, I did the spacebar separately to show the difference. They turned out really nice but some needed some more treatment.
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I also wiped down the top housing with windex and then reassembled the keyboard. This particular chassis uses self-tapping screws which are pretty risky as they can possibly cross-thread the screw sockets. I just rotated the screws the opposite direction in the socket until I felt the pop of the screw falling in the threads and then screwed them in gently.
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I snagged pre-built firmwares for the Teensy that were posted on here by user juryduty and by Hasu on Geekhack and I loaded this onto my Teensy and I chose to use a 5-pin socket as I really love this original cable and hope to one day use it on its matching computer if I ever come across it. I soldered everything together using the pinouts I found online and it works! I've been using this keyboard at my main PC for about a week now and it's awesome. This XT layout is a lot older than when I started using computers and it's been really cool getting to know this classic layout. All I need now is to find a box for this converter and to mount the ports on both ends.
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) but it's basically a plastic foundation which is strengthened by sheets of painted metal. I hopefully will soon have some prototypes to show.
