- Doubleshots box.jpg (489.54 KiB) Viewed 1179 times
Here's some of my new doubleshots, compared to those that came off the OK-100M (relocated to the AT102W, above):
- Doubleshot comparison.jpg (703.73 KiB) Viewed 1179 times
The keycaps are also identical to those on a Focus FK-2001, and the Northgate OmniKey pictured on the wiki. Lots of keyboards have keycap sets with identical legends, or striking similarities (differences in the way shift, tab, backspace etc are laid out).There's strong evidence that Taiwan Tai-Hao was a major keycap manufacturer in Asia and, unlike other companies, has retained its tooling to this day, and continues to make doubleshots available for sale. We can assume that they did have Mac moulds, so that suggests that may be able to do Mac group buys too.
Interestingly, Tai-Hao didn't offer Windows and menu keys, which were available on the FK-2001. I wonder where those moulds went to. I only got a pile of (still doubleshot) 1, 1.25 and 1.5 unit blanks, which I think is what Elton said we would be getting. They're useless to me as they really show up how much my Cherry/DSA mods don't match, which black blanks do a better job at hiding.
Some more pictures:
- Keycap undersides.jpg (653.57 KiB) Viewed 1179 times
- Keycap selection.jpg (602.28 KiB) Viewed 1179 times
- Assorted keycaps.jpg (675.96 KiB) Viewed 1179 times
- Doubleshot blanks.jpg (713.05 KiB) Viewed 1179 times
Which reminds me … when the battery dies, it reverts all the image numbering … (it forgets to commit the last-used image number). I need to copy back the images to force it to reset the image counter.
As for the keycaps, I forget what they cost, something like $8 per set? You get what you pay for, of course. The legends are a bit iffy, but largely fine. The imperfect opacity of the green pigment isn't a big problem really. I wanted mostly F keys, and the text on those is a bit spindly, as it was back in 1992. I kind of wish I'd got a black set now, though, considering how worn my Filco caps are, but I love their typography so much, and nothing on earth can beat that except another set of wears-in-three-months Filco caps :( Not unless we commission Futura doubleshots, anyway.
For entry-level doubleshots, they're perfectly adequate, especially considering that they probably exceed the aesthetics standards of most people purchasing them. For the nitpickers, SP's keming undoes their higher-quality moulding and dies.
(PS since I hate Christmas I should note that the red and green colour scheme is purely a by-product of the delay in shipping, not my newly-awoken festive spirit! Humbug! ;-)
