Some beamspring keyboards I found today

Bass · 14 Apr 2018, 03:19

HI all,

So I managed to find some beamspring keyboards at an electronics surplus warehouse:

I believe both of these are 3278's, though one of them did have a copy of the 3279 manual in the bottom compartment:

Although I haven't opened them up completely yet to confirm, I am guessing these won't have too much rust since the person who stored them put this weird plastic wrap between the switches and keycaps, but some of the stems got a bit bent due to the way they were stored (as you can see in the picture on the number row).

Anyway looks like I'll now need to buy some xwhatsit controllers from orihalcon to test these guys out. I'll need to remove all the caps to get rid of the plastic, so are there any things I should be aware of when attempting to remove the stabilized keys in particular?

codemonkeymike · 14 Apr 2018, 03:22

There are some posts on it but you need to make sure you pull straight up or you will crack the key caps. Take a look around the Workshop threads on bseamspring repairs.

nsmechkb · 14 Apr 2018, 03:31

Congratulations on the find! Two beautiful boards.

zool · 14 Apr 2018, 03:40

nice find!

Brett MacK · 14 Apr 2018, 03:45

Wow you don't find boards like that everyday! Really lucky finds for sure. What I did about the plastic wrap on my board is peeled what i could away with tweezers/pliers while hovering over with a shop vac/vacuum. After you get all of the loose stuff you scrape off the rest that is stuck to the key stems.

I am really jealous of that second board man, look at those keycaps!

Bass · 14 Apr 2018, 03:55

Thanks! I definitely do want to get around to restoring at least one of these but I am also wondering if I should sell the other since beamspring keyboards seem to be going for some ridiculous prices on ebay nowadays.

JP! · 14 Apr 2018, 03:55

It is dangerous to post these here. You are going to have many of us pm'ing you to sell those. Not just one...but two

Those APL keys are spectacular.

JP! · 14 Apr 2018, 04:04

Bass wrote: Thanks! I definitely do want to get around to restoring at least one of these but I am also wondering if I should sell the other since beamspring keyboards seem to be going for some ridiculous prices on ebay nowadays.

I'd say sell or trade one since there isn't much sense in keeping two of the same keyboard.

wobbled · 14 Apr 2018, 04:05

there's like $6000 in that picture.

E3E · 14 Apr 2018, 04:11

JP! wrote:
Bass wrote: Thanks! I definitely do want to get around to restoring at least one of these but I am also wondering if I should sell the other since beamspring keyboards seem to be going for some ridiculous prices on ebay nowadays.
I'd say sell or trade one since there isn't much sense in keeping two of the same keyboard.

Don't you have multiples of the same board?

JP! · 14 Apr 2018, 04:14

I'm not sure if there is any difference between the 3278/3279 keyboards. They look the same to me, excluding other variations of the two of course.

JP! · 14 Apr 2018, 04:16

E3E wrote:
JP! wrote:
Bass wrote: Thanks! I definitely do want to get around to restoring at least one of these but I am also wondering if I should sell the other since beamspring keyboards seem to be going for some ridiculous prices on ebay nowadays.
I'd say sell or trade one since there isn't much sense in keeping two of the same keyboard.
Don't you have multiples of the same board?

Who, me? If so, I do of vanilla Model M's and F's which I plan to sell eventually.

JP! · 14 Apr 2018, 04:27

"So I managed to find some beamspring keyboards"

You don't find them, they find you!

Sangdrax · 14 Apr 2018, 17:41

Great find. I also got my 3278 in a surplus sale last year. The vulcanized rubber under the keys is the contaminant shield for the board. They all have them. As far as stabilizers, main concern is the little plastic clips that hold the wire for the spacebar to the switchplate. Take a look at other people's projects and you'll see the way.

Good luck with cleaning up and restoring them.

Chyros · 14 Apr 2018, 18:51

Fuck me! Noice!

seebart · 14 Apr 2018, 19:33

Chyros wrote: Fuck me! Noice!

Yeah really, that's some find.

green-squid · 14 Apr 2018, 19:37

Double lucky bastard! Cool finds!

Iggy · 14 Apr 2018, 19:54

Some people pay thousands of dollars for one that was dipped in magma. Other people get two damn fine ones for the price of a Cola bottle.

(No, I don't know what those two have cost, but it makes for a nice sentence.)

seebart · 14 Apr 2018, 20:09

seebart wrote:
Chyros wrote: Fuck me! Noice!
Yeah really, that's some find.

BTW you just found like $1000+ right there.

Bass · 14 Apr 2018, 20:31

Well, if you guys thought I wasn't lucky enough...

I didn't pay the "price of a cola bottle" for these (I won't say exactly how much but to give you a rough idea, kind of expensive for a used keyboard by electronics surplus / thrift store standards but very cheap for a beamspring). I haven't thoroughly checked them but I haven't seen a significant amount of rust on these, which I am guessing owes to the fact that these were stored in an inland area of SoCal which has an overall rather dry climate. The cases and caps are rather dirty and the foam may need to be replaced, as some of these do feel VERY wobbly, though these do still feel very nice to type on. Anyways, I am probably going to try and sell most of them to people on here first (and maybe on reddit), so stay tuned.

PS: And before anyone asks, only one of them has the APL keycaps on them, unfortunately.

mike52787 · 14 Apr 2018, 20:33

impressive, finds like this dont come up often. #dta8

green-squid · 14 Apr 2018, 20:42

Did they have any other IBM gear (non-keyboards) there? If they had some mainframe gear, you need to contact a computer forum (I can contact 2 if needed) so that they will be safe in a local computer museum or a collector's home.

Not trying to brag, but this has worked for me. Few months ago, I saw someone on /r/mk posted about finding some keyboards at his work, and one of them was an SGI one (rubber dome). I asked about wheter they had the computer to go along with it, and he said they had a few big-ass SGI altrix (server stuff) racks. I asked about wheter they are free to take, and he said yes, they don't use them for anything. After I made someone (DodoDude) contact Nekochan, the biggest SGI-related community, and /r/retrobattlestations, we got a taker for them on the former.

Anything can happen, it's worth asking.

Bass · 14 Apr 2018, 20:48

green-squid wrote: Did they have any other IBM gear (non-keyboards) there? If they had some mainframe gear, you need to contact a computer forum (I can contact 2 if needed) so that they will be safe in a local computer museum or a collector's home.

Not trying to brag, but this has worked for me. Few months ago, I saw someone on /r/mk posted about finding some keyboards at his work, and one of them was an SGI one (rubber dome). I asked about wheter they had the computer to go along with it, and he said they had a few big-ass SGI altrix (server stuff) racks. I asked about wheter they are free to take, and he said yes, they don't use them for anything. After I made someone (DodoDude) contact Nekochan, the biggest SGI-related community, and /r/retrobattlestations, we got a taker for them on the former.

Anything can happen, it's worth asking.

I honestly do not know, am I am guessing the owner of this warehouse doesn't either. I did see several old terminals while I was there but I don't think any of them were IBM. Even if he did, I think the starting price for the terminal monitors he had were around $100. If anything, I'll bet more people have come there in search of those than the beamspring keyboards they came with. So, I wouldn't be getting them from him for free

In fact, what's more amazing is that there were no Model F's or even Model M's. The nicest mechs I found there aside from these were in fact some AEK II's with dampened Cream Alps, virtually everything else was either generic rubber dome boards and a few other types of terminal boards (with primarily linear switches).

green-squid · 14 Apr 2018, 20:51

Shame they were seperated, but oh well

Terminal gear is actually awesome

Myoth · 14 Apr 2018, 20:57

green-squid wrote: Shame they were seperated, but oh well

Terminal gear is actually awesome

you say that but I'm curious as to what you'd do with a dumb terminal ... I'm ears open to your use-plan for such terminals

green-squid · 14 Apr 2018, 21:00

Myoth wrote:
green-squid wrote: Shame they were seperated, but oh well

Terminal gear is actually awesome
you say that but I'm curious as to what you'd do with a dumb terminal ... I'm ears open to your use-plan for such terminals

Since you are french, this may be relevant

: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... spberry+pi

JP! · 14 Apr 2018, 21:01

Wait so a total of 8 of these?!? What a score.

green-squid · 14 Apr 2018, 21:02

JP! wrote: Wait so a total of 8 of these?!?

http://pila.fr/wordpress/?p=361

EDIT: are you replying to the original poster or me?

JP! · 14 Apr 2018, 21:02

#dta8

JP! · 14 Apr 2018, 21:04

green-squid wrote:
JP! wrote: Wait so a total of 8 of these?!?
http://pila.fr/wordpress/?p=361

EDIT: are you replying to the original poster or me?

The OP.