Back again with anther NMB adventure. This one includes the tale of the unknown switches.....
After a long time I was looking for a NMB board with Gundams(soap dispenser) switches; these are the earliest switches that are known to exist with in the NMB 725 series of switches. They come in either white or charcoal variants and either would be a great find.
Charcoal Gundam
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So I won an auction and when I got the keyboard it actually came with the unknown!?
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I had never heard of these switches before and no knowing anything about them I consulted Engicoder because I knew he has a lot of knowledge about NMB switches.
After a lot of investigating about the switches, Engicoder hasn't seen these either before. We had come to the conclusion that the switches were undocumented and that they were different enough that they were not just a switch that was molded in another colour of plastic.
These switches are an early attempt in solving the problem with Gundams and how loose the caps feel on them. The new grey switches had a line of plastic in the grove that holds the caps so that they now fit more snugly.
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The only problem with the board was that the dye sub on the keycaps was really bad and when the seller shipped the keyboard it was not packaged properly. Therefore, some keycaps actually were lost in shipping to due a hole that was punched in the box that the keyboard was shipped in. In addition, some of the switches were also broken as well...
Still wanting a keyboard that was functional another Tandy keyboard became available on Ebay and it had the missing caps that I was looking for and this one had Charcoal Gundams on it!
So after they both showed up at my door I got down to making a keyboard with switches from both worlds
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Final Product
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