Here's a listing pic showing off the missing parts. Fortunately both of these caps were actually still present. The right shift key was just sort of sitting behind the palten but the spacebar had somehow found its way inside the thing and was obstructing the type mechanism and preventing it from returning all the way. I have no idea what happened to this thing for caps to be dislodged but not lost or put back on and for the dust cover to be with the machine but for dust to very much still be present. This thing is not the worst shape I've gotten a typewriter in (shipping hadn't maimed it after all) but its still in rough shape. The switches were very scratchy as a result of all the dust inside the entire thing. It had the lid and with that on the switches should have been protected but somehow this did not happen and the switches may have been attacked at some point.
There's the right shift key, there's a pretty severe crack in the side of the cap that doesn't show up well on camera as well as this bite mark or whatever. Your guess is as good as mine.
This is actually a nice layout all things considered. 14u alpha cluster with an extra 1u on the left to bring it back to a standard 15 and the bottom row is very modern. could totally put these into a 60% if you were an mad man. because they kinda suck and it would be a waste.
no branding on the switches or the PCB, this is the only thing on the PCB and it doesn't look familiar to me.
The switches are stiff but not very tactile domes. As you can see from the last picture you can fit an M9 switch into the plate but the fit is not tight. SKFF would likely also fit loosely in these if you tried.
The switches, while disappointing in execution, have some interesting aspects to their design that I am actually a bit impressed by. For starters the domes have 2 fins that fit into slots on the switch to hold them in place when the PCB is not in place. This makes handling them a lot easier than any dome board I've seen that doesn't use a single dome sheet. I really wish topre did this, it would make reassembly a lot easier. The other thing that I really like has is that in 2 corners of the switch they have a threaded screw hole that is used to hold the PCB in place without the need for any extra parts. That's the sort of thriftiness that I like to see, one where it reduces cost and part count without impacting important aspects of the design.
Like all dome boards the design of the switch doesn't really mean much if the domes suck and here the domes suck. They're stiff and weakly tactile resulting in a switch that takes some work to type on and doesn't do anything to make that work enjoyable. The domes are a cool green colour just like the SMK domes which is neat but you can't see them normally so not really a redeeming factor. The caps aren't even compatible with anything that I tried so these nice PBT dye-sub caps are forever relegated to these very mediocre switches. Still glad I got it though, learning is fun.