My plan is to build a modern twist on it as I plan to do with various other old boards such as the Honeywell BO1810 keyboard.
Here's some pictures I stole from an old post of HaaTa's
In this old add you can see how beautiful it was in its original color.
My plan is to put an LFK 78 next to a numpad and a windows trackpad from Amazon and then mount them in an aluminum case that I'll get powder coated in white or off white with a black stripe. Not sure yet how I'll do the lettering, some sort of stickers maybe? For keycaps I'll either use row 3 sa or maybe SA Honeywell combined with Maxkey black or stars for a more vintage feel.
As far as wiring, I intend to just hook up each individual component to a USB hub that will mount within the case. Then I'll run a custom cable to the PC. As far as switches, the LFK supports Alps and SMK 2nd gen so this will be a good opportunity for me to use my cherry mount SMKs. The numpad component will be cherry I expect so I'll just do my best to find a switch that isn't too dissimilar to the feel of SMK. Open to suggestions.
I'm hovering between these two layouts. The first, which I prefer, uses the HHKB layout, ish, and is reminiscent of those old keyboards that had basically just a space bar for the bottom row which I always thought was so beautiful and elegant. In this layout, the up arrow key actually becomes the delete key and I just use the numpad as a navv cluster which I always thought was cool anyway.
In this second layout, I keep the arrow keys and add one more row of F keys. However, I feel like this ruins the aesthetic slightly and looks a bit too modern.
The only other design changes I might consider would be editing the shortcut texts to more modern useful commands like media keys or other shortcuts. Another possibility is to make the trackpad round like in the original by putting a plastic cup holder ring or something over it. However, I like the idea of getting the full functionality out of the touchpad. I think a square touch pad still strikes a good balance between vintage and new.
Anyway, I'd love to hear what you guys think as well as any ideas or feedback. I have yet to figure out exactly how I am going to mount all this within the case or how I am going to make the plastic (or wooden) sides that will hide where it all joins together. I'll post pictures when it's all done but don't hold your breath. I have to buy the stuff, build the stuff, make mistakes, run into problems I hadn't thought of and my powder coating guy usually has a 1 month backlog. But hey, it's not like I have anything better to do right now.
