deskthority

I was happy to find that the one I bought has a working calculator, even though it has some LCD "bleed" on the screen, and all the keys seem to work OK.

So, question one: this thing has screws and plastic tabs. How do you open it? Cleaning time!

Question two: I think that the keys on this are probably alps.tw Type OA2 (white, clicky). Can they be cleaned using the deep-clean procedure that Chyros posted on YouTube for regular Alps switches, or is it a, "You don't want to do that."

Question three: I'm missing the square root key. Any idea where I can find one or an "artisan" that'd look decent? The calculator %, AC/ON, KB/CAL, and Esc buttons are all the same size, but they're smaller than the CTRL or ALT keys.

Thanks in advance!

Simplified clones are a lot more difficult to take apart and reassemble without damaging them while they're still soldered to the board.

alps artisans arn't really a thing. You can get pretty cheap sets of the same profile though, as they're a byproduct of switch harvesting. You could pick up practically any set and use one of the top row keys to fill it in.

Well, if genuine white Alps weren't $13.20 for a bag of 10 ...

I might sacrifice a switch or two to see how difficult they are to open. Otherwise, I'll just clean as best as possible, then re-sell. The switches are a bit heavier than white Alps, which I like, but I've got a Model M that works and feels great and my Model F project is still coming along. I've yet to find a keyboard better than either -- and the F doesn't properly work. Yet.

I have no opinion on the 'board's construction, yet. Chyros' videos mention that it's hard to find one of these in working condition because of the battery going bad and, on the 9000, at least, the keyboard doesn't function without that battery, which is not exactly a great design choice. However, I can say that the "slim" style is pretty nice, but if I was to swap switches, I'd probably use my Zeos 'board because it's much easier to open and swap switches from. I've already replaced 4.

$13.20 for a bag of 10 is cheap in the US. A recent Dell AT101W black Alps I saw on ebay is $60 and that's the cheapest one I've seen in a while. Matias switches are even $7.50 for a bag of 10 ($3.50 for 10 if you buy 100).

They go down quite a bit at quantity though. A bag of 200 is $60 delivered.