how rare is the northgate omnimac?

[jmg3]

I picked up two of these a few years ago in pristine condition -- basically northgate ultras, but all white, and with mac alt keys.
I like the look of it a bit better than a normal ultra .. but the lack of alt keys, I swapped some of the tan keys from one of my ultras onto my omnimac- -- now I want to switch the keys back, can't find the old keycaps. I haven't seen one of these come up for sale in a while, are they that rare?

[Polecat]

I've been keeping a database, documenting Northgate keyboards for several years now. Out of 920 Northgates on the list only 11 are OmniMacs.

Be aware that the OmniMacs came in two different shades, which were apparently matched to the two colors used by Apple. One is a brighter shade than the normal Northgates; the other is distinctly gray in color.

edit: added link to Mu's old post on the Mac colors.

viewtopic.php?p=507317#p507317

[jmg3]

Thanks-- I have a bunch of ultras, and t's that I've collected over the years, just love these keyboards. I've hardly ever seen omnimacs come up for sale, one I got off ebay that was in near-perfect condition, the other (I'm using now) was still new in the box -- a friend got it decades ago for an install, and it's been sitting on his shelf since the 90s, never opened. . The two omnimacs that I have are both much lighter in color than my normal pc ultras ... and have faded hardly at all. On one of them I was just tired of constantly hitting the "caps lock" key for "ctrl," and the "cmd" key for alt, so I swapped over the grey-keys from a standard ultra. Now kind of want the all-white look back.

I yanked this one out of storage -- kind of killed me to take it out, it was still brand new in the original packaging (and yes, I switched the cmd and control key, for whatever reason I thought the "cmd" mapped to control, I'm wrong, it maps to caps lock)

[Polecat]

Any chance you have the User's Manual from the NIB OmniMac? I've collected the info, including dipswitch settings, from 7 or 8 different Northgate manuals, covering the first three generations, but I haven't been able to find a book on the OmniMac.It's not mentioned in any of the Northgate books I've seen so far.

You probably know this already, but you can change the locations of the Ctrl, Alt, and Caps Lock via the dipswitch settings, at least in PC mode. I don't know if that works in the Mac mode, but it's possible. That's one of the reasons I'd like to find an OmniMac book. At least two firmware versions existed--3.04 and 3.13. Those also appeared on normal Gen2 Ultras, so perhaps the OmniMac was just a case and keycap thing.

It seems like the OmniMacs all date to 1990, which is what I'm calling the Gen2 period. Some (early ones?) had an "OMNI" key in the middle of the nav arrows, others (later?) had a second down arrow there. And it seems like the early ones were gray ("Platinum" in MacSpeak) while later ones were the bright off-white ("Fog"). But we don't have enough examples on record to really be sure of that.

[jmg3]

I *had* the manual for the omnimac -- I sent one of my ultras out to this guy on the internet to refurbish, and he asked me the same thing, for copies of the manual. I pulled the manual out, took pictures, printed them out and included them in the box i sent him, but no idea what I did with the manual. IIRC, it's the same styled , blue and white pamphlet sized manual that's included with all the other key boards.

I'm really swamped next week or so, but after this hump I'm going to go to my storage unit, where I know I have a few bins with all the keyboards I've collected over the years .. If I dropped the manual anywhere, I dropped it in there. If I have it, I'll post pics.

BTW, on the keyboard that I swapped the ctrl/cmd/option keys out for PC keys (not the one pictures), I do remember that I fiddled with the dip switches, and noticed that they were set up differently than as shown in the PC version of the ultra , I'm pretty sure I just flipped the switches to match what the Ultra manual said was proper for a PC.

[jmg3]

BTW, from what I can tell, the dip switches really don't do anything-- tried flipping dp5, doesn't do anything to the ctl/alt/caps lock keys, even tried switching them one by one, keyboard just operates exactly the same.
edit, I'm also using the standard ps/2 port, not the ADB port .

[Polecat]

From at least two of the Gen2 User's Manuals dipswitch #5 is the one that swaps the layouts.

5 up - Ctrl next to A, Alt bottom left, CapsLock next to spacebar, right Ctrl next to spacebar, right Alt next to arrows

5 down - CapsLock next to A, Ctrl bottom left, Alt next to spacebar, right Alt next to spacebar, right Ctrl next to arrows

[jmg3]

yup, and that works on my normal ultra keyboard. But on this one (I'm using it right now) flipping the dip switches doesn't seem to do a thing -- this is on both of them that I own, so it's not a defect in the keyboard (or maybe it's a defect in both ?) .

I'll point out again that one difference may be is that I'm using the PS/2 port, not the apple ADB port, most of the posts I've seen in here on omnimacs, they're being used with the adb port.

[Polecat]

Well that's actually good information. Makes me think that the OmniMacs have a different firmware than the other Ultras. Many years ago I was given the remains of two Northgates (not OmniMacs) by one of the authors of the Mac Bible who was trying to make a Northgate work on a Mac. He told me that there was a difference in the electronics on the OmniMacs, possibly the quartz crystal frequency. He also told me that some early Plus models came with ADB and were Mac-compatible, before the Ultra or OmniMac came out.

Since then I've acquired two OmniMacs, along with several other Northgates, and the crystal is the same as the Gen2 Ultras I've checked. But there could very well be a firmware or other difference. There were a bunch of firmware versions on the Gen2 labels, which suggests there were compatibility issues. The Gen3 Northgates all seem to have had the same firmware version, but of course none of those had ADB.

I have a couple of ADB Macs here someplace, as well as a converter to run an ADB keyboard on USB, so I need to check things out. I can also try my two OmniMacs on ADB and PS/2 to see what happens there. All that stuff is buried in storage at the moment, but it's a possible project for the near future.

[jmg3]

ok, I f'd up. I didn't unplug the keyboard before flipping the dip switch.
So, if I unplug the ps/2 cable first, and flip the dip switch, I can swap the alt/capslock/ctrl keys, as shown on page 9 here: https://bitsavers.org/pdf/northgate/omn ... _Apr92.pdf

Bizarrely, the dip switches are reversed. so if switch 5 is "on," I have ctl/al/caps lock in the first configuration on page 6. If it's off, it's in the second configuration-- so the dip switches are reversed.

[Polecat]

Excellent, thank you, more good information. I'm saving these notes on the Northgates (and Focus, Monterey, and a few others) in hopes of turning them into real knowledge someday.

[David Parker]

They're super rare. Haven’t seen one pop up in ages. Cool that you got the dip switches figured out too, that reversal is a bit weird.

[jmg3]

I may be taking one of my omnimacs apart to clean -- while it was still in the original packaging when I removed it, there is some light surface rust on the metal base where the white alps attach. If there's anything you want me to take pictures of let me know.

Interestingly, the bottom exterior plate on both my omnimacs say "omnikey gt6omni" on the back (the sticker). I thought I'd seen other omnimacs that said "omnimac" on the back

[Polecat]

I'd like to see the labels to log the firmware versions and date codes (probably a 0x code where 0 is 1990 and x is a letter representing the month). And whether they have the OMNI key in the nav area or a second down arrow.

The OmniMacs on my list had date codes from 0B (February 1990) to 0G (July 1990.

GT6 is the old 3 character FCC manufacturer ID. That's followed by the model number of the device registered. Of the 11 OmniMacs on my list 3 have the FCC code "GT6OMNIKEYULTRA", 3 have "GT6OMNIPLUS1". 5 don't have a code listed. That doesn't mean there wasn't an FCC code, only that I didn't record one. The Ultra codes appeared both ways also. It appears the GT6OMNIPLUS1 was the earlier code, with later ones having GT6OMNIKEYULTRA.

[jmg3]

yup, mine says gt6omniplus1 -- I'm going to hit my storage unit this weekend, i'll grab my other omnimac.
I'll just take pics of everything when I take them apart.


Funny that I've had these things for years, and they were my everyday keyboard for years, I went through a phase where I wanted fweer wires, went with a logitect I think cherry brown or blue (basically the same layout as a northgate inverted T with fewer function keys), after typing on this for the past few days, amazing how different and awesome the feel is!