Olivetti WS 785 x 3 aka early Christmas!

lolpes · 05 Dec 2015, 18:29

So as rddm pointed out on the great finds tread, there was an olivetti 785 NIB in Portugal. I had been talking with the seller for some time(presented my masters thesis this week, so no time for keyboards :p) and managed to go and see the boards for myself today....yes boards! Turns out the seller had 3 of these puppies brand new, and 1 of them was even sealed! The other was complete but unsealed. and the third one was only the keyboard itself in box. I will put here a mini gallery I did on the unboxing of the NIB one, and some pics of the others, enjoy, i surely did

The 3 boxes:

Unboxing:

The box itself, pretty big box I would say :p

Opening the box:

Contents: The keyboard, instruction manual, power cable for something...and replacement caps!

will show those in detail next.

Ok so here is the keyboard itself:

Detail of the replacement caps. These include an alternate enter key, and caps to enable different language layouts:

Only 2 of the boxes had these, one of them is still sealed.

Thin SP doubleshot plastic blue on light gray, blue on dark gray for F row.

The 3 keyboards!

Detail for the opened one:

Mx blacks, don't know if vintage or not, looking at the logo, looks like normal blacks i think(someone correct me if I am wrong):

Big spacebar! but detail for the black metal plate and pcb mounted stabs

Any other pics you should want please say

I still have to open one of these up but I have to get to work. Hope you enjoyed, i know I did

Prelim · 05 Dec 2015, 18:54

88' boards so vintages blacks of course

they look beautiful indeed, thanks for the photos!

rddm · 05 Dec 2015, 19:15

three more keyboards for the museum

Now you just need a converter to play with it!

ramnes · 05 Dec 2015, 19:52

Just salvage those boards and put the switches in some custom keyboards!

danielcepa · 05 Dec 2015, 19:58

Beautiful. Same oem as most vintage wyse boards. Same casing style / caps and identical (oversized) reinforced space bar. Too bad the blocking matrix on these is not ... optimal. Ended up harvesting switches caps and stabs from mine, even after a successful conversion.

lolpes · 05 Dec 2015, 23:44

ramnes wrote: Just salvage those boards and put the switches in some custom keyboards!

That is not a bad idea! They really feel very different from mx blacks, I never tought I would notice it so much!

But you also know I am a bit short on money right now, so I will sell at least 2 of the boards, and try to keep one for me. Maybe this way I can finally manage to save the cyrillic set

chzel · 06 Dec 2015, 00:52

I'd like to salvage some of them vintage blacks!

lolpes · 06 Dec 2015, 00:57

chzel wrote: I'd like to salvage some of them vintage blacks!

What would be the price for the vintage blacks? I am seriously thinking about it, salvaging 2 boards and keeping one for myself.

Prelim · 06 Dec 2015, 01:25

lolpes wrote:
chzel wrote: I'd like to salvage some of them vintage blacks!
What would be the price for the vintage blacks? I am seriously thinking about it, salvaging 2 boards and keeping one for myself.

blasphemy! don't do it on NIB boards

(anyhow, vintage blacks don't worth that much)

scottc · 06 Dec 2015, 04:46

I've been offered desoldered vintage blacks at about €30 for a full set of 104. Still, that was long before Gateron appeared, so that price might be outdated. When you also consider the price of getting some used MX black board (eg. the cumb.de G80-1800s) + the cost of lube, it's hard for the price of vintage MX blacks to skyrocket too much.

lolpes · 07 Dec 2015, 14:43

Prelim wrote:
lolpes wrote:
chzel wrote: I'd like to salvage some of them vintage blacks!
What would be the price for the vintage blacks? I am seriously thinking about it, salvaging 2 boards and keeping one for myself.
blasphemy! don't do it on NIB boards (anyhow, vintage blacks don't worth that much)

I liked the boards a lot, so I won't

altough i am going to sell 2 of them and keep one for my self. One is already taken