deskthority

I just got my hands on a pretty nice find. I'll be revealing it tomorrow... for now you can get this pic as a teaser!



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Since the photo is far from great, I'll give you a hint: that is not black.

My wallet is ready

Those look pretty thick. Do you only have one of those Cherryfic finds?

olivetti

I'd say old Olivetti based on a G81, using vintage MY switches. Although, the Enter key doesn't match the one from your latest Olivetti post in the Classified. That one was straight... So you got another one of those?

Yes! I've been keeping my eyes open for Olivetti keyboards lately, looking for a rare board like this: http://www.ebay.de/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll ... 448wt_1189

Well I've been so lucky I found two! And in different flavours.



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They are G81-3000 with two different kinds of cherry MY switches and different stabilizers. The black switches feel much better than the whites.



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Olivetti called them "KBD 2812".
And now the best part: keycaps. Both keyboards have blue lettering.



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Dye-subs with nonstandard font.



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Thick double shots with standard cherry font. I've never seen them filled in blue before!

Very cool! Nice haul.

Makes you wonder why they made the CTRL key non-standard on both boards. I have also seen this done on a single other Cherry board from the late 80s.

Wiki updated!
Btw, can you tell the year of manufacturing by the label?

The second one (2nd label picture) is made in the 27th week of 1990. The other one is impossible to tell, but it will be later, since it already says "Germany" instead of "West Germany".

To find out for sure, you can open the case and look for a stamp in the inside of the top and/or bottom case. There likely is one.

The second picture refers to the double-shots, white MY keyboard. I thought it was newer than the dye sub one, aren't the black MYs older stuff?
Anyway I opened the other keyboard, but no stamp was found.

Both switch types seem to have co-existed for quite a while. Though the black ones were definitely the ones to come out first.

If there are no stamps, you can also take a look at the molding marks in the top case. There should be several circles with little arrows pointing at them. Cherry used these to indicate when the case was molded. Usually this was about a month or two before the actual keyboard was assembled.

For reference:

Stamps


Molding Arrows

Grond wrote:The second picture refers to the double-shots, white MY keyboard. I thought it was newer than the dye sub one, aren't the black MYs older stuff?
Anyway I opened the other keyboard, but no stamp was found.

the case should have the date imprinted in a circle with the year in the middle and month around it like on a clock
edit: see above

edit2: btw great find. keep it for a rainy day

I found the circles. They say 4-90 (for the dye-sub one) and 6-90 (for the double-shot one).

Nice loot indeed.

Now, all I want is a dye-sub with original Cherry font in blue. Mix those two together -somehow- ... maybe I'm just asking too much .

It's sad that is it so hard to get nice stuff like that here, in good ol' america ¬_¬;. It's either IBM buckling or Razer BS (not buckling spring).

HoboBob wrote:It's sad that is it so hard to get nice stuff like that here, in good ol' america ¬_¬;

They're quite hard to find here, too. I had to wait several months before finding my first set of italian double shots, and they came from america!

Anyway, if anyone is interested in one of the keyboards/keycaps, I'm open to offers. Otherwise I'll probably end up trashing the keyboards and keep the keycaps only.

Grond wrote:They're quite hard to find here, too. I had to wait several months before finding my first set of italian double shots, and they came from america!

Haha nice. All the Olivetti I've seen are typewriters or domes. Well played.

Olivetti used to be big on typewriters. I guess they just didn't manage to keep it up with computers.

Grond wrote:Anyway, if anyone is interested in one of the keyboards/keycaps, I'm open to offers. Otherwise I'll probably end up trashing the keyboards and keep the keycaps only.

The cases are of good quality otherwise, twice as thick plastic as modern G80/G81-3000s. Too bad that the innards of modern G80-3000's are so different. The guts may fit, but the LEDs are not aligned and the modern PCBs rely on details that are not there.
I put the guts from a Chicony 5181 into one of these cases -- that made it a better keyboard.

noooo don't trash T_T

The black MYs should be halfway decent - these would seem to bind less and hence give a smoother typing experience. Still way too stiff for my taste though.

Findecanor wrote:

Grond wrote:Anyway, if anyone is interested in one of the keyboards/keycaps, I'm open to offers. Otherwise I'll probably end up trashing the keyboards and keep the keycaps only.

The cases are of good quality otherwise, twice as thick plastic as modern G80/G81-3000s. Too bad that the innards of modern G80-3000's are so different. The guts may fit, but the LEDs are not aligned and the modern PCBs rely on details that are not there.
I put the guts from a Chicony 5181 into one of these cases -- that made it a better keyboard.

The older G80-3000 boards should fit it with no issues. Just grab one of the easy to find German PCBs and you'll be set since the layout is the same.

The black MYs don't feel like typing on a dead dog, but they're still far from great. Maybe I'll try to put some g80-3000 guts inside in the future, but the cases would need some retrobrighting, I don't know if I want to mess with that stuff.

Grond wrote:The black MYs don't feel like typing on a dead dog, but they're still far from great. Maybe I'll try to put some g80-3000 guts inside in the future, but the cases would need some retrobrighting, I don't know if I want to mess with that stuff.

Those cases look good to me. They were never 100% white, more of an ivory/beige color. The only thing those cases have going is the blue led cover.

Try and score one of the cool NCR industrial grey/olive cases. I have a G80 guts in one and it's awesome.

How about this?



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That 11800 does not deserve such awesome caps. There's only a few boards those caps should be allowed to be on.

#1 The Phantom
#2 G80 Guts
#3 Any Korean custom board (but they might all be ANSI)

Can't think of anything else.

I wish I could afford a phantom!

I'll trade you a phantom PCB for one of those keyboards

I would accept if I could solder! But I will consider cash if you want to offer.
EDIT: Now on marketplace http://deskthority.net/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1835