Aquarius CSK-2102 - White ALPS

[Nuum]

Hello,

I'm kinda new here, I was lurking and reading quietly for quite a while now but I never introduced my self. So let's do that first, before I show you the keyboard from the title.
I'm currently studying Engineering in Germany. About a year ago I bought my first mechanical keyboard, a Tesoro Durandal G1N with MX Brown, which I'm still using with thick Cherry PBT dyesubs. I know that it's kind of a cheap keyboard but I really like it. Furthermore I own a G80-1000 HAD and another ALPS keyboard, which I will show you in a while.

But now to the keyboard, which I meantioned in the title. It's a German ISO Aquarius CSK-2012 with (complicated) clicky white ALPS and a Dolch-like color scheme. The switches feel amazing to me, much better than MX Blue.
This is, how the keyboard looks, I cleaned it quite a bit but it's still a little bit dirty and yellowed.

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label.JPG (973.48 KiB) Viewed 6077 times

It also has a nice cable channel, so you can have your cable anywhere you want. It has a DIN plug, which has the same pins as PS/2 but is much bigger. The housing reminds me of a mix of a G80-1000 case and a Focus FK-2002 case. There ist no manufacturing date on any part of the keyboard, perhaps it is hidden under the metal plate.
Here you can see, that the edges of the keycaps are yellowed quite a bit:

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The profile is kinda standard:

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keycaps rear.JPG (987.9 KiB) Viewed 6077 times

The caps could be thicker, but they fell quite nice. I threw them into water and they sank immediately, so they should be PBT, but they seem lasered with infill or pad-printed. The Spacebar has another ALPS mount to the right of the normal mount and a cross-mount, which does not fit on Cherry MX on the left.
Unfortunately some keys are supershiny but the lettering is as clear as on the other keycaps, so I don't really know how the lettering was made. Maybe some of you know more about that.

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The caps have a nice curve on the sides, while the front and back are straight:

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PCB:

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The PCB has an Intel controller, but it doesn't say, who made the keyboard.

Costar-like stabilizers:

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stab insert.JPG (977.69 KiB) Viewed 6077 times

It has an AT-XT-Switch:

AT-XT-Switch.JPG (976.78 KiB) Viewed 6077 times

The switches should be complicated clicky white alps:

White ALPS 2.JPG (983.36 KiB) Viewed 6077 times

The photo colors are not quite right, they are a little bit too blue but I'm not very good at correcting colors.
Does anybody know, if retrobright would work on grey yellowed keycaps too or wether it would bleach them?

Thanks for watching my first keyboard thread! Feel free to use these pictures, but please refer to this thread.

Nuum

[BlueBär]

Very nice looking board. I think retrobright would bleach them.

[sean4star]

I agree about those complicated whites. Much smoother with a pleasant actuation and click. It makes the MX blues seem harsh by comparison.

[scottc]

Really nice board. I also agree about complicated white ALPS. Much more pleasant than Cherry "clicky" switches.

[Muirium]

Intel controller chips were very common, from what I can tell. Certainly, I've seen a few. Even my 1984 Macintosh keyboard has one! With some Intel copyright date from the seventies on it, as usual.

Alps are pretty distinctive aren't they? I'm toying with the idea of a Matias switch custom keyboard now I have caps to spare.

[Nuum]

I would like to build a custom Alps keyboard, too! I think, I've seen jdcarpe planning a Alps TKL groupbuy over at geekhack, let's see, how that goes. I'd love to have a TKL or even smaller Alps-based keyboard.
I don't know how Matias switches feel, they should be technically the same as simplified Alps, shouldn't they? I really like the feel of those complicated ones and i've heard the simplified are not quite as good as these. But I've never tried them for myself.
This keyboard has quite decent rollover, especially on the WASD area you can press all necessary switches for FPS-Gaming at once. But I'd like a keyboard with n-key-rollover, just for the sake of having it.

[Kurk]

From a distance I would say your caps are pad-printed ABS.

The caps remind me of the portable thing I've found a year ago.

http://deskthority.net/photos-videos-f8 ... t5298.html

[Nuum]

Yeah, they look pad-printed. But they must be laquered, so that the lettering on the very shiny caps remains intact. Also they sink in water, but maybe that test is not reliable.

[nourathar]

nice-looking keyboard and caps ! is that plate plastic or metal ?

[Nuum]

It's metall, approx. 1mm thick.

[002]

Nice board! Regarding the retrobright, it seems to be a bit of a misconception that it works by bleaching the plastic, but it doesn't, otherwise restoring items like the grey Atari 130XE wouldn't be possible.

The bleaching/bloom issue happens when you use a stronger Hydrogen Peroxide or you add too much Oxiclean. For keycaps, I wouldn't even bother with the Oxiclean -- just soak them in a jar with diluted H2O2 out in the sun. If you're worried about bleaching the caps, try it with a single one first maybe around the bottom of the cap only so worst case scenario it will be hidden on the keyboard. I think it will be fine though.

Oh an your keycaps don't really look too bad yet anyway I would hold off for a while!

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Costar-like stabilizers: …

Better: Costar stabilisers.

The first three or five (and in vintage keyboards it will be three) letters of the FCC ID represent the "grantee", the company to whom the FCC ID has been granted. Pop that in here:

http://transition.fcc.gov/oet/ea/fccid/

GS2 is Costar.

[terrpn]

nice-- congrats on a great looking board

[Halvar]

A very good-looking Alps board, and the legend print looks much prettier and more durable than on my black Dell AT-102. May I ask how you found this? Never heard of an "Aquarius" brand before.

[Nuum]

Basically it was pure luck, I found this on Ebay a while ago. It looked rather interesting and the description said, that the keys "click" on activation. Since it didn't look like a MX board to me, I was curious and bought it. Actually I would have bought it as MX version, too! It wasn't that expensive. Later on, just after I got it delivered, I searched for it on the web and someone on geekhack has found one of them, too.

I searched for the FCC ID (thanks for the tip, Daniel!) and ther is one with the exact same but with 2084 at the end, so that leads me to think, that there are some with a layout similar to the Keycool 84 out there (FCC ID: GS23TYDGK-2084N). And of course an ANSI version.