Dyesub sucks: the story of an innocent F122

[hansichen]

Clickbait title so let's go straight into the topic: recently got lucky with a Model F122 on ebay and after some struggles it finally arrived at my place. Sad picture of the unpack event:

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Apparently this wasn't a shipping damage but the seller only had a picture from the top so this damage was barely visible and it looked like some bad lens issue. Thankfully only plastic parts are damaged and the metal internals are in good condition. So let's get into pictures of the board itself:

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This seems to be the old French Swiss layout, a layout that's long forgotton and that I've personallynever seen before. The following pictures are some closeups of IBM dyesub caps being shiny like ABS caps and faded like bad pad printing

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Also there is a lot of shine on the case as well. There are several spots where there is no texture left at all.

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And obviously IBM dyesub doesn't suck, this board was just abused more than I've ever seen before

[orihalcon]

I've seen some IBM boards with PBT caps worn down occasionally, and my hypothesis is that they were used in some sort of industrial environment where there would have been very fine abrasives on the user's fingers when they used them and over time it basically just sands keys down, and only the keys that were used frequently in that environment/usage scenario. Guess F15 must have done something pretty important! How most keyboards were used previously is often information lost to the ages, but that's my speculation whenever I see that kind of wear.

[hansichen]

Abrasives is an interesting idea. My idea was some mass data input (therefore the usage on the numpad key) and the F15 and F6 to control the software itself and to switch to certain functions in the software. The signs on the case defineltly look like someone had his hand on the numpad and also on the F keys as well. Sometimes I wish that keyboards could talk about their history. This one came from a seller in Czech Republic so it already traveled quite a distance as well. Manufactured in the UK, most likely sold to Swiss, retired in Czech and now reactivated in Germany. The board itself is working flawlessly and I'm typing on it right now. Really nice board but also a bit too large

[JP!]

You think that's bad check out this old KayPro keyboard.

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[hansichen]

At least the legends are still visible