(Fun fact! I booted the Thinkpad from a floppy with QEdit and am typing this post on it. Speaking of good keyboards...)

Here's the bottom. Not as bad. I left this pic full-size so you can read the stickers if you want.

This thing is fully programmable, apparently the config file is plain text that you upload to it. It has this RJ11 jack on the cable that I'm not sure what is for.

Open it up, and

Wow, that is... strange. There are a bunch of dust bunnies, as expected, but the PCBs themselves look pretty clean on this side. The filth on the inside was dry & loose, so I hit it with the vacuum.

Here's a closeup of the main control board. I don't know how many of these things were made but it had to be a pretty small run. Note that the ROM is stickered for three different models (essential, classic & pro) and there are empty spaces for other components on the PCB. Also the instruction, "cut for USB." In a lot of ways it seems more like prototype hardware than a mass-produced product.

The PCBs for the keybeds are that curved and held down at least partly by hot glue. I bet EEVblog guy would have something to say about that.

Incidentally, all the screws on the inside are identical except one. The six that hold the case together on the outside are also identical.

This is how the function keys are assembled. Typical membrane design which is backed by a piece of blank PCB material(!), which is plastic-welded in. I had to break the "welds" (white dots) to get them out. Not sure how I'm going to hold them back in yet.

Here's what all the innards look like exploded out. Yes, they're still gross.

Close-up so you guys can see the horror.

For some reason, there are three ALT keys with one missing. And no CTRLs. I don't think that was the standard layout. Some of the stock key positions are marked on the PCB itself so I'm going to have to take a closer look.

To start with, I pulled all the keycaps off and tossed them into a bucket:

Okay, fine, I guess there's going to be some bucket.

Here's what that left me with:

Yeah, nice. 😠

These mouse-pad palm rests are official accessories for these. Needless to say they were NOT gonna stick around. Fortunately they were easy to peel off.

Predictably, the top cover is rather yellowed, this shows the extent. The pads went in the bin. No way am I gonna rest the same hands that I eat with on those.

Let's make some suds!

This should be interesting 😀
Never seen curved PCB before 😕

Carry on ^^

I let the keys soak in the detergent for a while, hoping that would lift away most of the grime. Changed the water a couple times and blasted them with the spray nozzle. That wasn't enough to get them completely spotless, but after all, what alternative did I have? Scrubbing them individually with a toothbrush?

OH WAIT THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I DID. Well, more accurately I used three toothbrushes. Every single key. Suffice to say it took BLOODY AGES and was a HUGE PAIN.

That said, the results were quite good. Here's a before and after:

The blue home row keys are stock, but they're a different shape than the others. Weird.

Laid out to dry. There are actually only 67 keys, not including the rubber F-key pads. 68 if you count the one I'm missing.

Incidentally, here's what the top cover looks like after having been scrubbed with Simple Green and dried. Yeah it's pretty yellowed, and the missing palm rests are obvious, but at least it cleaned up really well. Haven't decided if I'm going to retrobrite this yet. Only a couple of the keycaps seem to have yellowed much (the "tall" enter & backspace) so it's probably worth putting the effort on this piece.

I hit the keybeds with the vacuum brush and manage to clean them up fairly well. Again, the grime was thankfully not greasy or sticky at all. I'm gonna hit this with compressed air tomorrow (once the shops open so I can get another can 😜 ) which should get them up to 95%. Really glad I didn't have to clean these with liquid.

That's it for tonight! Come back tomorrow when things are dry for the exciting continuation!

BTW if you’re wondering if the screen on the Thinkpad is any good for DOS gaming, the answer is yes, it totally is! Also, if you’re wondering if Arkanoid II runs unplayably fast on a 433MHz Celeron, the answer is yes, it totally does. 😠

So it has a great personality?

I've always wondered if any of those "au natural" keyboards actually do anything o.0 ... other than just confuse and cause mistypes. If find my hands aren't restricted to either side when I'm typing so I suspect I would find something like that *difficult*.

I'm waiting for this to become available on the NHS...

GREAT THREAD!!! I like how you present all the stages with details and other fun facts 😁

That's some weird keyboard all right. I know a guy in my country who would kill for this keyboard 😁 He has several hundred keyboards of all sizes,shapes and you name it!

Did you wear a HAZMAT suit?

xjas wrote:

Haven't decided if I'm going to retrobrite this yet. [...]

Who am I kidding, did you guys really think I'd pass up an opportunity to make this even more complicated & involved?

Here's about ten bucks of retrobrite ingredients from my local pharmacy/everything shop. Went for a gel peroxide solution instead of liquid. The stupid oxi detergent was the most expensive part, because I had to get it at the supermarket and they only want to sell stuff to families of 12.

I decided to do the three most yellowed keys along with the top cover just to see how they'd turn out.

Mixed it up in hopefully the right proportions...

Some proper artistry going on here. Well, maybe not.

I went for the 8-bit Guy's method of wrapping it in plastic. It's 12 PM and it's now sitting out on a bright sunny day (next to my car which gets constantly shat on by birds.) We'll check back in a few hours.

Robert B wrote:

Did you wear a HAZMAT suit?

Erm, I did go out and buy some latex gloves ... which I probably should have done before even touching the thing in the first place. Ah well. 😜

WOW.

That went well.

Just for a reminder here's how it looked like before retrobrite (but after a thorough scrubbing.) :

Some improvement there!

It's still a tiny bit patchy, you can see a few spots of yellow left in the right light at the right angle. It could have another application but I'm not going to go that far, I want to actually use this thing, not put it in a display case. 😜

The keys turned out great too, I was worried it would fade the letters but it didn't. Maybe I should have done them all.

Incidentally, this is as good as I could get the key beds without resorting to liquid cleaning (i.e. using compressed air and one of those paintbrushes in the above pic.) Again, they're not perfect, but I can live with them. These things are concave and convoluted so they're almost guaranteed to form monstrous filth traps in use. Gonna have to keep an eye on what's going down there.

The Kinesis patents just expired a little while ago. I wonder why we haven't seen cheap knockoffs yet?

Jorpho wrote:

The Kinesis patents just expired a little while ago. I wonder why we haven't seen cheap knockoffs yet?

^^ Interesting ... they're still making them and selling them AFAIK. The current design is virtually unchanged from this one.

One last photospam! Time to put it all back together & see how many bits there are left over.

No jokes, this is a pain in the butt to do. The keycaps resist any attempt to pick them up in the right orientation and slide straight out of your fingers. Especially if you've spent all day desiccating them with peroxide and isopropyl.

Some of the letters are worn in interesting ways. I bet I could guess the previous owner's logon password if I did a little detective work. 😜 One of these blanks is the 'T' and one of them is the 'R'; I have no idea which. Fortunately they're exactly the same shape so it didn't matter all that much.

Yes, that means many other same-size keys on this thing are not the same shape. There's probably a dozen variations to deal with.

I'm still missing both Ctrls and I still have one too many Alts. This was my solution to half of that problem.

Done!

Reassembly is the reverse of removal. Incidentally I totally got this right first try. Because I'm just that good.

I almost certainly didn't assemble it with the ribbon cables for the function keys in backwards the first time around, and have to take it back apart to swap them around. Why would you think that would happen??

Just before I post the finished product, I'd like to remind you guys what it looked like when I started out.

...and here it is now:

Much, MUCH better. As soon as I find a replacement right Ctrl key I'm calling this an unqualified success.

Note that when I got it, there was a sticky note on it that said "broken." So does it work?

Of course it works! Every key works, the internal buzzer works, all the LEDs work, the programming mode works. It's mint. That may have taken the better part of two days, but I think this one was worth saving.

Nice, and funny, write-up!

Unfortunately, it's still ugly as hell 🤣

They should've gone with a two-part design instead of that ugly white slab.

Great post thankyou! I cried, I laughed, I nearly puked a few times. Amazing result 😎

very nice work.

I'd opt to die some of the keys

xjas wrote:

I let the keys soak in the detergent for a while, hoping that would lift away most of the grime. Changed the water a couple times and blasted them with the spray nozzle. That wasn't enough to get them completely spotless, but after all, what alternative did I have? Scrubbing them individually with a toothbrush?

I wash my keys in a washing machine.