deskthority

Well, I finally managed to catch some time, and finish cleaning up this beautiful board. This was the Unsaver that was left last of all the ones in Cindy's haul, with number #6 in the photo at post318406.html#p318406

Another photo from Cindy



warning: Here be potato pics.

I'm bad with "before" photos, and this is the only one

The board had some 12 keycaps missing, but Cindy found replacements for most of them, which i appreciate tremendously. If you look closely at the legends you can tell a difference, and some keys don't have front-printed legends, but that's nitpicking. That missing PA3 key, though, that's annoying If anyone has an (incomplete) Unsaver keycap set they don't need, shoot me a PM.

The barrel frame was corroded a bit more in the middle left, so i took it out, sanded it with 60 grit sandpaper, than 120, and finally 180. I ended up removing what I assume is primer coating at one part of the board, so I sprayed the board with a rust inhibtor:


That removed a lot of the primer but not all, so I took out the plastic stabiliser hooks and took the frame out for sand blasting


Finally I had it powder coated as well - primer + matte black



It's a thick coat, so serial number on the plate is barely discernible


After returning the stabiliser hooks


I considered painting them as well, but I don't mind them showing their age, and it was already a tight fit after powder coating


Interesting thing about PCB is that there are extra pads in the nav area, and between left ctrl and alt, but none of them are connected



Bottom casing and back plate are both unicorny, rainbowy, amazing




Back plate had some oxidation, but it's just too nice to sand away. I brushed it away with cloth, so it's cleaner than it was. I wonder what rust inhibitor would do to it, and if it would work at all, since this probably not iron oxide. Zinc perhaps?


Foam was in nice shape, so i decided to keep it



Springs are looking nice as well


Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the case before I cleaned it. It was somewhat dirty and with some markings. I first cleaned it with isopropyl alcohol, then I used a pencil erasers on some markings, then I used bleach water, and finally I did another pass with IPA. Here are some pics of the problematic parts of the case. If I'm not mistaken, this case is dyed, and this is probably just the paint cracking. I wish there was some way to fix it up quickly. It's not that noticeable in common usage though




I also put barrels and keycaps into dental tab solution and followed that up with IPA as well. I also sprayed leg springs with rust inhibitor. The only thing left is to clean the cable. Finally, today, I made everything ready for reassembly


One spring was missing, so I took a spare, and put it into ANSI left shift position. Once I ANSI-mod it, this will be gone



While on topic of ANSI modding, I have a keycap set on its way. I would like to get version of stabilised keys with wire stabilisers, and I actually have some from a spare AT set. However there is no Backspace there, and they have text in legends, as opposed to OG Unsaver ones, so they don't match fully. A new full set of pebble keys is what would be ideal. It's also interesting to note that the barrel frame has plastic stabiliser hooks for ANSI keys as well, but, and correct me if I'm wrong, Unsaver (and F122 and M122) only came in ISO layouts.

Ghetto clampin'!


And after a bit more work, lo and behold



I forgot to which pins DIP switch connects, as I disassembled the board a couple of weeks ago and didn't note it (note to self: must. take. before. pics.). If anyone can look it up, that would be great. It's not a big deal, however, since I don't know what any of those settings do I assume it is something terminal related and wouldn't be exploitable with a regular PC directly or through Soarer's converter.

If you made it this far, thank you on your interest and patience. Finally, special thanks go to Cindy and HAL for making it possible for me to have this awesome keyboard, fohat for his tips about plastic stabiliser hooks and idollar for his detailed F122 disassembly which was of great help with the Unsaver as well.

Great job alh, you did an amazing work!

Very nice, in this case it would be very welll worth the effort to fix the cracked paint. Your IBM collection is coming along quite nicely. The displaywriter and now this.

BTW what's up with the lines in your pics? Your camera outputs the matrix or is it from editing the pictures?

Very nice alh! Mine is on the way!
Pity about the cracking, any idea what you can do about it other than a repaint?
It's a nice and rare sight that the foam is immaculate!

seebart wrote: Very nice, in this case it would be very welll worth the effort to fix the cracked paint. Your IBM collection is coming along quite nicely. The displaywriter and now this.

BTW what's up with the lines in your pics? Your camera outputs the matrix or is it from editing the pictures?

I would really love to fix that paint, but I'm at a loss where to even start. And even if I wasn't, I'd like to have something to first try and see what happens and not do it straight on the board.

IBMs - yeah, I'm kind of at a point where, if talking about BS only, the rarest of them are missing - square badge industrials and kishies (I'm not counting weird one offs, XT variants and 3178 variants). And 5155 keyboard . I'm not counting on getting those any time soon, so I decided my SSK doesn't cut it and found a new "target" in DisplayWrite SSK It would accompany that DisplayWriter nicely. There's also a membrane BS board with almost-AT layout, which would be fun to have too.

As for the pics, I need to get a new phone. It would be strange that this is a hardware failure, since they are not consistent across pics, but it used to work fine. In the meantime, the phone has fell so many times, I'm wondering how it is still alive. It's one of the last Nokia Lumias, built like a tank.

chzel wrote: Very nice alh! Mine is on the way!
Pity about the cracking, any idea what you can do about it other than a repaint?
It's a nice and rare sight that the foam is immaculate!

I really don't know. I know I'm being naive when I'm hoping I could melt it locally and just smooth it out. I'm hoping some of the more knowledgeable people here might have an idea or two. The foam is really nice. The only thing that was a bit run down were the sponge strips attached to the foam on each side, but I've seen worse, so I just cleaned them up a bit and left them there. Have fun when your's arrives!

alh84001 wrote: I really don't know. I know I'm being naive when I'm hoping I could melt it locally and just smooth it out.

I don't think that's possible. On a Model F the structure on top of the case is painted. Can't melt that

Nice restoration project. 85 is a good year for keyboards.

Too bad about the paint

HAL wrote: I don't think that's possible. On a Model F the structure on top of the case is painted. Can't melt that

Yeah, that's what I thought as well. Still, it has to be a thick layer doesn't it, for it to crack like that? Or do you think the crack runs in plastic as well?

alh84001 wrote:

HAL wrote: I don't think that's possible. On a Model F the structure on top of the case is painted. Can't melt that

Yeah, that's what I thought as well. Still, it has to be a thick layer doesn't it, for it to crack like that? Or do you think the crack runs in plastic as well?

Mine has similar issues. When I inspected the case on the inside I could ne see any damage. I think that only the paint is affected.