Model F/AT ISO Enter key wobble

[AndyJ]

I replaced the Big-Ass Enter key on my Model F/AT with an ISO Enter key. The BAE's spring is in the bottom right, it has a guide sleeve to the left, and it wraps the barrel on the top, plus it has a stabilizer. The BAE has almost no movement other than vertical.

The ISO Enter doesn't have a stabilizer or a sleeve; it just has a guide pin.

I popped the BAE off, moved the guide sleeve from the left to the top, and popped the ISO Enter on. Actually, I had acquired two ISO Enters; the first one binds up when pressed on the bottom. The other works, but it's more wobbly than I expected.

Is this normal for an ISO Enter on an F/AT, or does the ISO key take a different guide sleeve? That one key binds up and the other is wobbly makes me wonder.

[Seirin-Blu]

Not entirely sure if there’s a functional difference (I’d have to play around with some of my keyboards) but what color of plastic stabilizer is in the barrel? There are black and white ones. White ones for horizontal and black for vertical.

I’d try a black one if you can fish one out from another keyboard or somewhere else.

If I remember I’ll look at one of my ibm keyboards later.

[Muirium]

Black and white stabiliser inserts differ in position. Use the wrong kind and you will definitely notice. The key will jam, as I recall; having made this mistake way back when.

Could wee see some pics of the Enterless keyboard and said Enter keys as you describe? Pictures tell…

FWIW: my Model F AT works perfectly well with an ANSI Return key and I believe the same is true for ISO with everything in its right place. This may involve moving the spring and flipper.

[AndyJ]

The original, left-side BAE sleeve was white and centered; I moved it to the top position for the ISO key. I had a black stabilizer handy; it wouldn't work any way I clocked it.

I just looked at the parts again, and the white stabilizer has a round hole, but the BAE has a rectangular peg. The ISO has a round peg, small diameter at the bottom, then stepping up to a larger diameter at the top.

Hmm.

I dig out one of the Model Ms and popped the keypad Enter key off. Wire stabilizer. Tried another. Ah, it has a peg! And it has a *gray* sleeve! I pulled the sleeve and tried putting it into my working F/AT. It wouldn't go. After a bit of fiddling I found it clocks with the hole offset to the left, not top/bottom. I popped the ISO Enter back on and voila! Much less wobbly, and it doesn't stick.

Dropping the white and black sleeves onto the pegs of the two ISO keys, I found the peg on the "Field Exit" marked key was slightly larger in diameter than the blank one. That key is noticeably more stable.

Thanks for the help, guys!

[AndyJ]

Doing some more poking around... there's still a slight wobble on the ISO Enter, but wiggling the other keys, it's exactly the same as any other key on the board. The reason it's still noticeable to me became apparent when I flipped the original big Enter key over - it has two external guide sleeves, a peg, *and* and wire stabilizer. It was rock-solid with almost no play. So the BAE was the weird key, and I was used to it.

[Muirium]

Model Fs can get wobbly when the foam has crumbled inside, making things a bit loose.

[AndyJ]

I'll check that shortly. Thanks!

Meanwhile, even with the offset sleeve, one ISO Enter would still sometimes stick if pushed on the bottom edge. The other one stuck if pushed on the top.

I popped the horizontal Enter key off an M. It functions perfectly. [sigh] I wanted to move another key to the home row. Above the M Enter is close enough, but the selection of keycaps in 1.5u is limited. Not that the key necessarily has to be what the cap says, but it would be nice.

Did any of the ISO Enter keys have wire stabilizers?

[Muirium]

Any chance of photos so we can figure out exactly what you’re facing?

Whereby we I mean me, because I’m absolutely too thick to follow words where an image or two will do the job nice and sharp.

[AndyJ]

Give me a day or so for the pictures.

[AndyJ]

Okay, some pictures:

keycaps-top.JPG (1.26 MiB) Viewed 1589 times

keycaps-bottom.JPG (1.34 MiB) Viewed 1589 times

[AndyJ]

I ordered some dry Teflon lube to try on a spare board.

Meanwhile, I've found the Model M horizontal Enter key works just fine. I've been using boards with a horizontal Enter since trying to get away from the F/AT in 2010, and I got used to it.

The ISO Enter key gives an extra standard 1u key to the left. The horizontal Enter gives an extra 1.5u key above. The default '|,\' is acceptable, or I could just use a blank cap and and assign the key to anything I want. Or put some other keycap on there to mess with people.

[Muirium]

When I’m home I’ll see if I can find an ISO Return in my IBM caps spares and try this on my AT. You’ve got yours in my configuration now: ANSI Return works just nicely; and the 1.5u key above it is my HHKB style Backspace key.



I can’t see why your ISO Return won’t work. The flipper is in the right position for it: bottom right on the keyboard. All I can think of is horizontal vs. vertical stabiliser inserts. ISO Return should take the vertical kind, like numpad Enter does. ANSI Return uses the other: like the Shift keys.

You’ll need to open up your barrel plate to install the extra flipper needed for the extra key you have revealed, or indeed the other one freed up by going ISO.

[AndyJ]

Yeah, I need to populate several barrels so I can split the two shift keys and the insert key, too. As well as cutting new holes for the M space bar.

I followed a couple of old threads about people moving the backspace down to just over the Enter key. It would save me a reach-up to get to backspace; I ordered a 1.5u "Backspace" keycap with my Unicomp order last night. It's always nice when the keycap matches the key function.

I move "~,`" over to the old Numlock position and put a second Escape key in its place. Having a left Esc lets me do a lot of vi/vim stuff one-handed. "|,\" is in the old ScrollLock position now; it will replace the original backspace key.

I split the right shift using an old CapsLock key and a 1u blank; there's no flipper under that barrel yet. The I always use the right side of the right shift; the stepped CapsLock key hasn't been a problem at all.

I can't split the left shift key until I add a flipper. The right side will remain left-shift; I have a 1u "Shift" coming from Unicomp. I haven't decided what to do with the left part yet. It's not quite in the keyboard ghetto like the alt key, but it's close. I have big hands and somewhere along the way I got in the habit of reaching between the alt and spacebar keys with my thumb to tag the shift key; I never touch the left side at all.

Even if the ISO Enter key worked OK, I think I like the Model M horizontal key a lot better, plus I'm looking forward to moving the backspace key down there. I do a lot of text editing, and make very heavy use of backspace and the cursor pad. I've already caught myself reaching for the left side backspace key and I haven't even done the M spacebar mod yet.

[Muirium]

HHKB style Backspace is addictive, because it’s right.

I agree with you on matching legends being a plus. My snobbery for keycap quality is all that puts me off going to Unicomp for my own specific stuff. I ordered from them several years ago and their legends were lousy, clashing badly with IBM’s.



So I stick to OG caps, and ignore the misleading legends, as I’m seldom in the habit for looking down to find them in any case. I don’t even miss the homing nubs on F and J.

[AndyJ]

Supposedly Unicomp got better after getting new tooling. I'll live with it either way.

I swapped some Model M F and J keys on, but I can't really feel the nubs. It's easier to sweep my fingers left to right; the Model F and J are easy to spot because they're about 1mm higher than the Model F alpha keys.

[Muirium]

Yeah, the thread I linked discussed that. The pic has 3 caps for that reason: OG IBM plus the two different ages of Unicomp. I suspect the same guy there who pushed the Unicomp SSK project was also responsible for the legend refresh. He could have done better, but it’s most of the way there. What they were shipping in 2015 was atrocious.