I remember thinking to myself "This keyboard binds worse than any board I have tried before," but after feeling the F keys, I knew it had to just be really dirty, as the F keys actually felt really nice, and had no binding issues whatsoever. I asked him if he would mind if I took it home, and he really didn't care for it. After opening it up, thankfully it only had 6 screws holding it together, I was bombarded with dirt, corrosion, dust, and hairs. This is what it looked like after I had cleaned it all up. All the spots and scratches were the corrosion bits.
After cleaning it, I decided to also do some retrobrite, as the keyboard was so yellow it looked more like a week old banana than a pleasing grey. For the caps, I used a pot filled with water and 3% hydrogen peroxide heated to 150 degrees for about 8 hours total. While they are still not perfect, I didn't see much more changing after the 7 hour point so I decided to just stop there. They keyboard case was put outside in a bin filled with the same solution. This was only outside for about 5 hours and looked great when I was finished with it, though it too was still yellowed, however it matched the keycaps almost perfectly so I just let it be. This was the end result.
While all that was happening, I plugged the bare board with the switches (which are NEC blue oval clicky switches) and ran a test. Unfortunately nearly all the F keys didn't fire, some of the alpha keys didn't work consistently, and the numpad was going crazy, constantly typing random garbage. After looking at the board, there was a lot of corrosion on the back potentially causing shorts, especially on the numpad. After cleaning all the corrosion, the F keys (except for F8) and the numpad started working again. However, the aforementioned F8 key and some of the alpha keys still failed to work. I noticed that the B key would fire constantly when pressed for a minute or so, but when I pulled it up it would stop, this also seemed to apply to the other non-working keys, just at a higher extent. This led me to clean the switches. Unfortunately, the switches are basically impossible to disassemble without breaking them as they are riveted shut. Instead, I used contact cleaner and sprayed the key all over and pressed it very fast to try and clean any debris, by some miracle this worked. This, however, didn't solve the bad binding and overly scratchy feel of the switch very much, so I did a test of lubricating the slider to see if that made a difference. It did, and now the keys I applied the lube to started to feel like the F keys. After I fixed the whole board and lubed the switches up, it was time for final assembly. This is a quick YouTube video of the typing demo -
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kbLj9N2684[/youtube]
So far, I have spent about a day using this keyboard in it's current state, and it's quite nice. First of all, the caps are very nice double shot ABS, with this strange grey lettering over a more clear black lettering.
The keycaps are sculptured while also being at an angle, and are nicely spaced. All in all the form doesn't feel awkward or strange by any means.
The casing is of similar quality, it is rather thick and not too plastic-y. The build quality is shown by the fact this keyboard barely flexes at all. Ultimately, it feels like a well made product.
The switches are also very nice, though they are not perfect. On the good side, the click they offer is quite prominent and feels natural while not being too overly tactile. They produce a nice deep and satisfying sound that makes these fun to listen to. The space bar especially to me sounds awesome, with a really deep and shouting THUMP that rattles the whole back plate. Speaking of the back plate, it does in fact ping pretty loudly but to me it just adds to the keyboard's soundtrack. The switches are a bit stiff but are otherwise nicely weighted, not too heavy in which your fingers hurt when typing, but not too light where you'd think you would actuate the switches just by resting on them. However, you'd be wrong to think that you wouldn't be able to actuate these by resting your fingers on them, as they actuate way before the tactile click, and can be easily actuated without even going up to the tactile bump. Despite that, this keyboard is really nice to type on, and is definitely going to be on the top of my list when it comes to deciding which keyboard I want to use that day.
For a free board, this one is really nice, and I am happy to have restored it to (almost) it's original glory. Thanks for reading, let me know what you think of this board if you've tried it before, or any questions you may have about it.
