Alps Appreciation

[wjrii]

Hi everybody. I recently won an auction for four vintage boards. One is a weird (likely) Clare Foam and Foil that's in terrible shape, but the rest are white Alps or clones. For those, I was hoping to get a little info and help.

First is a Tai Hao TH-5539-3 with clones. This one is in immaculate condition, a few scuffs on the bottom like it'd been moved around over the years, but still had the packaging plastic sleeve on the coiled cord and no crud or yellowing I can discern. However, it seems like it has a pretty poor design with its BAE, which has a horizontal Alps stabilizer on its "ANSI" half, and a simple post-in-sleeve for its "backslash" half. That top half binds terribly. It seems like other makers based their layout on ISO and had a vertical stab with a smaller post where the accent/backslash/etc. key would be. Focus even seems to have jammed an entire Costar cherry-mount stab into the top half. For the Tai Hao, is there anything to do, other than (for typing purposes) treat the board like an ANSI with its backslash moved elsewhere?

Next up is a Focus FK-5001. It had its cord cut, but with a Soarer's it is working well, despite needing a cleanup pretty badly. Genuine white Alps, and as mentioned a better design for the BAE. I am curious if anyone has ever found any electrical difference whatsoever between the two banks of F keys, such that I could remap the XT bank of F-keys or without affecting the other. Also wondering if anyone has managed any macro-magic on a converter to make the diagonal arrow keys work better. I assume the Turbo and and dedicated calc keys are a lost cause when it comes to remapping. Other Quality of Life thoughts would also be welcome, as right now all I've done is remap the "Macro" key to be a Windows key. My calculator currently works well.

Last one is a Focus 7000P with a trackball, also with White Alps, but in what was clearly a fit of corporate madness, the trackball pushes out the arrow keys and relegates them to mouse microswitches with no proper keycaps. This one is a bit of a mess, quite dirty, a broken "flap cap" on an arrow key. When I plugged in the same converter I made for the , there were lots of spamming presses and some that wouldn't work. It was also down an extra keycap compared to the 5001, so it donated one and is now missing three. My current plan is to (eventually) harvest the switches and caps (still the nice double-shot with color-coded mod legends) and put them in a DIY M0116-ish build and use the Tsangan style cluster as arrow keys. Is there any particular reason to hold onto a de-cord-itated trackball board versus stripping it for parts?

[joshstevens]

IMG_4311.JPG (1.4 MiB) Viewed 11413 times

I "inherited" (read: found in a closet) this beauty from my dad, who bought it some 34 years ago. White Alps . Wasn't nearly as clean when I got it, though. Also, my first mechanical keyboard!
Here's what it looked like before my cleaning, if you really like dust.

PXL_20241014_225241541.jpg (1.42 MiB) Viewed 11413 times

[Polecat]

Wow, nice! Looks like a rebadged Gen1 Northgate 102. It sure isn't like any Focus FK-2001 (which used that style badge) that I've ever seen. Any labels on the bottom side that would tell us more?

[joshstevens]

Just the serial number, the inside says both "Omni-102" and "Omni/101A," along with a Focus sticker stating it was "OK" and manufactured in 1990/7/4.

[Polecat]

Thank you. The reason I'm asking is because there are some mystery Gen1 102 keyboards that seem to have been built in 1990, after Northgate came out with the Gen2 models. Those seem to have had no Northgate labels or branding, and were probably sold under another brand name. The serial numbers on these do not use the normal Northgate format. Instead they have a 7 digit serial number beginning with 100, 101, or 102.

Yours is the first one of these (assuming it *is* one of these) I've seen with any kind of badging, and I'm wondering if the Dataworld and 2001 badges came there, or were added later? I've been trying to solve the mystery of how these were branded and sold for some time now.

Just the serial number, the inside says both "Omni-102" and "Omni/101A," along with a Focus sticker stating it was "OK" and manufactured in 1990/7/4.

[joshstevens]

PXL_20241217_023135635.jpg (2.15 MiB) Viewed 11253 times

Here's the bare PCB, in case you can make any sense of it. I've cleaned it after this image, thankfully! The Dataworld badge can come off, but the 2001 is either just on there or glued on very tight.

[Polecat]

Thanks again. The PC board is the same as the gold label 102 models. I have one of the generic ones myself, also with a Focus label inside. But mine, along with the others I've seen, has no branding at all, just a blank recess where a badge would normally go. No sign of glue or removal marks. One seller of a blank example said his came that way. I have 6 of these on record out of almost 900 Northgates in the database.

Here's an old post with a photo of the bottom side of a generic model. (second photo) This style label is sometimes seen on non-U.S. Focus keyboards, and the serial number falls into one of the Focus formats. We know Focus built the Gen1 Northgates, but these generic 102 boards are still a mystery.

viewtopic.php?p=480276#p480276

Here's the bare PCB, in case you can make any sense of it. I've cleaned it after this image, thankfully! The Dataworld badge can come off, but the 2001 is either just on there or glued on very tight.

[engr]

Here’s an interesting one: programmable 4th Gen Omnikey, rebadged for “TietoEnator” (a Finnish IT company apparently), with some interesting macro keys.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/267141348945

I recall one of these has showed up either on here, on GH or r/mk, a long time ago.

[Polecat]

Interesting. There aren't many of those out there. Many years ago, before I knew about this site, there was a black TietoEnator keyboard on ebay for $275 or something like that. I wanted the black case, but the seller didn't know much about it, and the price was way too high for me.I've seen and documented 5 or 6 beige ones since. It was a factory rebadging, because the model number and serial number are nothing like any of Northgate's. But it says Vendor 20017, just like a Gen3 or Gen4 Northgate.

The Avant keyboards that were sold later on did not have a Vendor number, and had some differences in the PC boards from the Gen4 Northgates. Those also came in black and beige, at least on the Stellar model. But I've never seen a factory black Northgate. It would be interesting to get some internal dates from one of the TietoEnator keyboards to see where they are in the timeline.

Here’s an interesting one: programmable 4th Gen Omnikey, rebadged for “TietoEnator” (a Finnish IT company apparently), with some interesting macro keys.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/267141348945

I recall one of these has showed up either on here, on GH or r/mk, a long time ago.

[ththirdKey]

Wanted to show off my Omnikey Ultra with remapped keys. I recently purchased for a comparatively low price and was shocked at how pristine it was (other than an F1 key switch which had completely shattered and replaced from a donor) I pulled the implanted keycaps off an Omnikey 101P I am in the process of restoring (hence the windows key). As this is now my daily driver, I wanted it to be as functional as possible.

[engr]

If anyone has an Avant Prime or Avant Stellar that is not functioning properly, there is a good chance that this is because its EEPROM, which stores the key map and macros, is dead. The usual advice is to desolder the EEPROM and use the keyboard as a non-programmable one. But there is a better way, which, as I recently learned (and confirmed on my Avant Prime), does not require cloning a working EEPROM - which may not be easy - with a chip programmer.

1. Get a compatible EEPROM chip - I got an Atmel AT24C16 on eBay from a seller who appears inactive, but I am pretty sure it's the same one you can buy here. Manufacturer's data sheet says it's good for 1M write cycles and 100 years of data retention, so hopefully it will last longer than the original ones. You can get them in a DIP pin version rather than SMD, so you won't have to do stuff like this.

2. As Polecat recommended, get a DIP socket (8-pin, 2.54mm pitch, 8mm row-to-row distance) to make inserting/removing chip easier in the future - this is the one I bought.

3. Desolder the old EEPROM chip, solder in the DIP socket instead, and insert the new blank chip.

4. Plug in the keyboard and press the reset key sequence: (Right Ctrl) 4 times, then (Left Shift)+(1), then (X). The LEDs should flash several times, and the keyboard will initialize the new chip.

It worked on my Avant Prime. Since I no longer have my old Ultra-TP or 101P, I can't confirm if it works on them - what I do know is that simply transplanting an EEPROMs from Avant Prime or Stellar into 101P or Ultra-TP does not work by itself. I also don't know if the reset key sequence is the same for 101P or Ultra-TP as it is for Avant Prime/Stellar, but if anyone has one of these, it's worth trying.


Another tip on repairing/restoring Omnikeys: if you need new sheet metal screws that hold together the top and the bottom case halves, look for M3x8mm stainless steel Philips-head self-tapping screws with a head diameter of 6.5~7mm. For some reason, I have not been able to find this exact screw type from any US vendor in a non-bulk quantity (not even on McMaster, which usually has everything), so I ended up ordering them on eBay from a seller in China.

Another part that you would think should be simple to find are those textured bumper strips for the metal case. They are about 2"x0.5"x0.125" in size, made of some sort of hard rubber (probably about Shore 60~80A; not the soft neoprene that you can easily find online). Something like this might work if you trim them to size, but I haven't found them in beige color.