Blanked my Unicomp

[dwasifar]

Bought the blanks from Unicomp when I bought the board to save on shipping, just never got around to putting them on until tonight.

They're not super consistent about the colors of the stems:



But it came out looking pretty good when all done:



There was quite a bit of flash on some of the caps, more so on the dark ones for some reason. So I kept a clipper and an emery board handy and removed the worst of it. Didn't get too fussy with it though.

If you're wondering why the LED lenses look a little silvery and weird, that's because they're silvery and weird. I changed out the LEDs in this board for blue ones, and once I got it assembled they were retina-searing. So rather than doing the right thing and getting dimmer LEDs, I stuck little pieces cut out of an antistatic bag over them as an improvised filter to cut down their brightness.

[bocahgundul]

Really really nice keycaps there I love blank keycaps

[dwasifar]

Thanks. It's my first blank board. I took it to work today to see if I could code with it as well as type on it. It's generated a lot of comment from coworkers. The guy in the cube next to me asked if he could try it, and sat down and typed out a perfect paragraph. I was impressed.

Under the office fluorescents, I can see that the keycap colors are not entirely consistent. For some reason I can't photograph the inconsistency, but some of the dark keys are a little greenish and others are a little brownish.

Having the real Model M and the Unicomp version right next to each other really shows up the Unicomp's quality control issues. I understand why they exist; nobody would pay what it would cost to make a board to IBM's original standards now. But I'm already missing the crispness of the real M.

Were there ever real IBM blank keycap sets made? Or is that purely a Unicomp thing?

[Muirium]

Good question.

Technically all dyesub caps (like IBM's buckling spring caps) are first made as blanks, then printed with legends in a kiln. So yes, absolutely! But did IBM ever ship these blanks to anyone? I do not know.

[dwasifar]

Excellent. You answered the question literally and I learned something, and then you answered the question I meant to ask. I have never heard of blank original-IBM sets either. I would think they'd have been useful for schools, so there is reason to wonder if they exist. I think I want to convert at least one of my IBM M keyboards to blanks, but if I have to use the Unicomp caps I'd probably want to spend time with them and clean up the flash and molding slop.

[Touch_It]

Blank caps looking really nice. I just hate Unicomp's led overlay logo.

Edit- I wish they would make black and pebble versions mimicking the IBM original LED overlay.

[dwasifar]

Blank caps looking really nice. I just hate Unicomp's led overlay logo.

Edit- I wish they would make black and pebble versions mimicking the IBM original LED overlay.

You can buy that kind of overlay from Unicomp for restoring old IBM boards, but they won't work on the current production boards because the LEDs are in the wrong place.

[andrewjoy]

Do they do a blank one ? Then you could just remove the LEDs and rock a silver label / 102 terminal style look

[dwasifar]

Do they do a blank one ? Then you could just remove the LEDs and rock a silver label / 102 terminal style look

They do, in fact:

[Touch_It]

I think I could live with a Blank insert. Ideally Id like to see Unicomp make one with the LEDS holes in the upper position and the names on the bottom. I've never been a fan of the lock symbols. It's a minor complaint, but If I'm going all out custom I'd rather not compromise.

[andrewjoy]

or they could just make the Pebble one in an upper LED version

[dwasifar]

or they could just make the Pebble one in an upper LED version

I wish they would. The stock overlay is dreadful. It has the Unicomp logo on it that looks like it was created in Microsoft Paint.