There were a few cool things about this board. The first is that the PCB and design is all Cybernetix and not some OEM. And also that all the chips are socketed. What I would give for every other keyboard manufacturer to have that kind of sense.
It's also mounted on a plate that reminds me of beamspring ones but a lot less heavy without all the actual beamspring modules.
And those distinct Maxi-switch linear colors
I decided to go with a hand wire since everything was dirty and scratchy and I'd have to desolder everything anyway. Might as well get NKRO out of it.
So down to the plate. Then everything removed, cleaned and lubed.
Then handwiring the matrix. I've gotten quite a bit faster at this now that I've done it a couple of times.
I used a scrap piece of silicone sheeting from another project to provide an extra layer of protection against shorts between the keyboard and the backplate. I mounted the controller this way so it would friction fit against the top of the case and also would be easy to just take the top case off for reprogramming with the reset button in a convenient place even when typing and testing new configurations.
Caps are mostly their original color, with a faint yellow gradient that's stronger on the left so I decided not to bother with retrobright or anything. Looks pretty good in regular light. They're polished DSA doubleshot ABS, and while good quality, they aren't comparable to the super thick Futaba or Honeywell or IBM monsters of the same era.
It's configured with my usual setup for these kind of layouts, which is normal numpad in layer 0, fkeys over top row numbers on a second layer, block nav as media controls on that layer, and a third layer that basically uses it as a tkl. Works very well once you get used to the small backspace and the high positions of Ctrl and Alt. The Caps Lock is also a latching switch. I used it as a shift lock instead of a caps lock, but QMK does support proper locking caps.
And here's what it sounds like to type on, with my horrible typos from not being used to it.
Actually, probably gonna sell this one and my Samsung Futaba to somebody that doesn't type like a gorilla. It's frustrating to have cool boards with good switches that just plain don't fit your typing style. Even so, wasn't bad at all to type this whole post on it.