Apple Extended Keyboard II

[GnatGoSplat]

I picked up a nice example of a vintage Apple Extended Keyboard II. No yellowing, looks very nice, but the key movement feels a little gritty, not smooth. Is there a good fix for this?

From my understanding, this has the same style keyswitches as my old Apple IIGS keyboard had, and that one felt smooth, granted it's been around 17-years since I sold my IIGS so my memory of how its keyboard felt may be a bit hazy.

 

[Mac128]

I picked up a nice example of a vintage Apple Extended Keyboard II. No yellowing, looks very nice, but the key movement feels a little gritty, not smooth. Is there a good fix for this?From my understanding, this has the same style keyswitches as my old Apple IIGS keyboard had, and that one felt smooth

Haven't you heard, yellowing is a thing of the past!

Check this articleout. As I recall there were in fact two different keyswitches used depending on where it was manufactured and both of those were different from the original AEK (at least one of them was). One was much worse than the other.

 

[GnatGoSplat]

Yeah, I know yellowing can be fixed, but my AEKII was a pretty good price (for eBay) so the fact that it's nearly cosmetically mint and non-yellowed is a bonus! The only visible wear on it is the command key is a little shiny, even the home keys aren't the least bit shiny at all and not even a hint of yellowing. I didn't realize my Mac Classic was yellowed at all until putting this keyboard next to it. I won it for $1.99 because the seller had his auction end at 4AM, granted, the shipping was around $10.

Looks like mine has the "good" ALPS keyswitches and not the Mitsumi. Actually, it doesn't really feel gritty to type on, it just does when pressing the keys slowly. I did spray a little WD40 on the sliders of the F-keys to see if that would do anything. It seems to made them a little bit smoother, but not a lot of difference. It seems to be fine to type on when I type quickly so I guess I'm just not accustomed to the feel. My other PCs have IBM Model M's so that's what I'm accustomed to. I don't know what people are talking about when they say the AEKII is loud, it's not loud at all!