[GreenKeys] Looking ofr a model 33 keyboard key

[Jones, Douglas W]

On Oct 11, 2016, at 3:49 AM, E. Groenenberg wrote:

> I'm going to cleanup my model 33 keyboard by replacing some light grey
> keys with darker ones which come from a donor keyboard.

First note, keys can be polished to their original color.  Others have done that.  The key is, the light grey color is an efflorescence of some component of the plastic, and it can be buffed off.  I'll leave it to someone who's done that to explan.

Second, you can get new keys.  I had a number of keys that were cracked and delaminated, so the grey outer layer of the key was split by some kind of chemical expansion of the inner white part.  See the keyboard photo here:
-- http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/pdp8/UI-8/log2014a.shtml#2014-03-11

Paul Cembura, mr_rtty at pacbell.net, has a good stock of new-old-stock keycaps that he's happy to sell.  I bought replacement keys from him for most of mine that were cracked.  The challenge is, you ned part numbers.  You can get an original Teletype parts list or $35, or so Google tells me, and it's on line at:
-- http://www.virhistory.com/navy/manuals/tty/jh/ttyman1/TeletypeManuals/Model32-33/1184B.pdf

Removing old keycaps to replace them is not too awful.  I discuss how to do that here.
-- http://homepage.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/pdp8/UI-8/log2015a.shtml#2015-01-29

		Doug Jones
		jones at cs.uiowa.edu