I picked this keyboard up sort of by accident last year in a lot of 3 old keyboards on eBay. It was a pretty cheap lot and they all looked decent, but I bought it immediately because at first glance at a blurry product photo I thought this was an IBM Model F. I have a model F that is in pristine condition but does not work (it is in the original box, marked defective in 1984) so I was looking for a keyboard to use for parts to fix that one so I could use it on my IBM 5150. After receiving this I realized it was a Keytronic. Even worse, when I opened it I saw it was a foam and foil... and all the foam had disintegrated. I wasn't impressed! Flash forward a year and I finally found a type of weather stripping foam that made a decent replacement for the old pads, so a month ago I went through the painstaking work of replacing them. The foam was apparently a bit thicker than the original stuff so the keys are a little more sensitive than I'd like, but it works without a hitch and never misses a key stroke, so for now I'm considering it repaired.
I'll be honest, part of why I put so much time into it was that I had googled keytronic FT05 keyboard and thought it was an incredibly rare Dimension 68000 keyboard, so I figured it was worth restoring. I did notice later on that there are slight differences in key placement, so it probably NOT from the 68000, but I honestly don't know for sure. It is probably the keyboard that the 68000 keyboard was based on, or at best it may simply be a different model used for the 68000... but I'm leaning toward it being the former. Another possibility is that it came with some other PC-compatible system.
Anyone know any more about this keyboard? It is in extremely good cosmetic condition. Very clean and in perfect working order (if a bit sensitive, as mentioned before). If its just a basic Keytronic "Model F" knock off I will probably use it on my 5150 for now, but if it is something that is collectible or rare I'll probably sell it to pay some bills or fund further retro computing purchases.
The stickers on the back of the keyboard say: "2823-51 2-84" "FT05"
The name Keytronic was in a few places on the inside.
It is like the keyboards mentioned here, but it is an unbranded 83-key XT style, which isn't specifically mentioned: https://deskthority.net/wiki/Key_Tronic_Model_F_clone_series
I'll be honest, part of why I put so much time into it was that I had googled keytronic FT05 keyboard and thought it was an incredibly rare Dimension 68000 keyboard, so I figured it was worth restoring. I did notice later on that there are slight differences in key placement, so it probably NOT from the 68000, but I honestly don't know for sure. It is probably the keyboard that the 68000 keyboard was based on, or at best it may simply be a different model used for the 68000... but I'm leaning toward it being the former. Another possibility is that it came with some other PC-compatible system.
Anyone know any more about this keyboard? It is in extremely good cosmetic condition. Very clean and in perfect working order (if a bit sensitive, as mentioned before). If its just a basic Keytronic "Model F" knock off I will probably use it on my 5150 for now, but if it is something that is collectible or rare I'll probably sell it to pay some bills or fund further retro computing purchases.
The stickers on the back of the keyboard say: "2823-51 2-84" "FT05"
The name Keytronic was in a few places on the inside.
It is like the keyboards mentioned here, but it is an unbranded 83-key XT style, which isn't specifically mentioned: https://deskthority.net/wiki/Key_Tronic_Model_F_clone_series