Good afternoon —
I recently came into possession of the IBM Model F keyboard that came with my Dad’s IBM AT that he purchased back in 1984, and I’m hoping to bring the keyboard back into service in some way. The inner foam has, as expected, disintegrated into a fine powder, and due to having been stored in a humid basement for something approaching 30 years, the top plate has corroded to the point where it’s no longer black, it’s actually completely white on the top instead, and the foam residue on the inside of it has left behind a rather disgusting, sticky, flaky mess that seems like it might be more trouble to clean up than to try to rescue.
I saw that you have a foam insert that, after a little trimming with some scissors, will work with an AT-layout Model F (the F107 layout, if memory serves), but when I look at the repair kits available, it seems that there are kits for every Model F except that layout. Is there a way to obtain a repair kit that has the correct foam insert for this layout?
I’m also hoping that you might be able to provide (or know how to source) a top plate for the same layout, since I’m not sure that I can strip the top plate of all of the corrosion and re-paint it without it winding up worse.
Any hints or advice would be very welcome.
Thank you!
~~ Matt Balmer
You could try to clean the springs (plain water so as not to affect the flippers?) but I would not remove them from the flippers as the precision attachment is important to the original sound of the keyboard. I have no recommendations for this, so I suggest starting with cleaning just a few. I’ve never seen a substance covering the springs that prevents normal sound and operation, so I can’t say for sure.
While disassembled you may want to just test that every key functions reliably (just plug it in with the PCB tightly bolted with both controller bolts/screws to the gold bottom inner assembly plate and place a flipper on top of the keyboard with a keyboard tester web site open). Better to test now than to install all the keys and then have to remove all of them when there is a bad row or column, or worse.