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|  | | | September 12, 2008 "Florian", the DVD burning robot September 05, 2008 The "i-EPIA" May 22, 2008 The "GTA-PC" April 14, 2007 The "Digg" Case January 19, 2007 The "ITX-Laptop" December 07, 2006 The "Tortoise Beetle" October 02, 2006 The "DOS Head Unit" August 31, 2006 The "Janus Project" August 05, 2006 The "Leela PC" June 26, 2006 Nano-ITX in a Football May 17, 2006 The "EPIA Alloy Mod" April 11, 2006 Neatorama's Collection of Case Mods February 18, 2006 The "Rundfunker" October 24, 2005 The "ITX TV" October 06, 2005 The K'nex-ITX August 05, 2005 The "Waffle Iron PC" July 21, 2005 The "Supra-Server" July 18, 2005 The "Mega-ITX" July 07, 2005 The "Encyclomedia" May 25, 2005 The "Accordion ITX" |
|  | | | May 16, 2005 The "FileServerRouterSwitch" May 15, 2005 The "Mini Falcon" May 13, 2005 The "Bender PC" May 11, 2005 The "BBC ITX B" May 10, 2005 The "Frame" April 20, 2005 The "Jeannie" March 09, 2005 The "Cool Cube" January 30, 2005 First Nano-ITX Project? January 17, 2005 The "iGrill" January 15, 2005 The "Gumball PC" December 15, 2004 The "Deco Box" December 03, 2004 The "TERA-ITX" October 06, 2004 The "Coealacanth-PC" September 17, 2004 The "Gramaphone-ITX-HD" August 26, 2004 The "C1541 Disk Drive ITX" August 25, 2004 The "SEGA-ITX" August 13, 2004 The "Quiet Cubid" August 06, 2004 The "BMWPC" July 14, 2004 The "Moo Cow Moo" July 02, 2004 The "Mini Mesh Box" Full alphabetical archive on right hand side of page... |
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The "Underwood No. 5"
By Joel Zahn, British Columbia, Canada -
Posted on March 13, 2004
Introduction
Quite a while back, one of my friends sent me a "photoshopped" picture of an old typewriter (it looked like a Remington) fitted with a monitor, mouse, and printer (the printer had the platten and carriage attached to it). I looked to see if "true" retrofit would be possible, but, at the time I researched the possibility, Mini-ITX motherboards were not yet available.
I stored the picture in my archives and pretty much forgot about it. After I had completed an Apple IIe retrofit, I sent a picture of it to my friends. One of them sent a link to this website.
I looked through all of the unusual mods and came across a mantle clock mod. The clock was from the 20s or 30s and it got me thinking about the possibility of doing a typewriter mod. I pulled the picture out of my archives and did some measurements. It would work.
I really didn't want to nuke one of my good typewriters (I collect vintage typewriters). The only No. 5 I had was one which started my collection. I looked on eBay and found a couple of "non-working" No. 5s. Well, one of the "non-working" No.5's was actually a No. 3 and needed to be re-sprung and oiled up (it was one of the few made in Canada, so it was NOT coming apart) before it typed flawlessly. The other, was a No. 5 and had better chrome than my original. A couple of unbent typebars, and a few shots of oil, later, it worked better than my first No. 5. I didn't have the heart to take either eBay purchase apart. I looked on eBay for old typewriter frames and found one guy selling typewriter keys, who agreed to look for one of his old frames. When he realized I was in Canada, he did not want to send it to me (too much hassle and too much for shipping). I decided that I would be taking apart my original No. 5.
Now that the Underwood retrofit is done, I'm quite glad that I took apart my original No. 5.
The "Underwood No. 5"
The "Before" picture. This is an Underwood No. 5 typewriter from 1924. The last patent date on the rear of the typewriter is August of 1923, however research into the serial number on the typewriter carriage has the manufacture date as June 1924.
I began the de-construction phase on my kitchen table.Off with the carriage!!
All of the screws were flat headed and had not been touched for almost 80 years.
Liberal doses of WD-40 were required.
The pile of useless parts slowly grew. It took almost an hour to get this far
along. With a closer look at the dismantled No. 5, one can see that the keys are
now seriously misaligned.
The rear of the dismantled No. 5.
I stripped the typewriter of its internals to the frame. Well, almost to the
frame. The typebar stabilizer was pinned to the frame, not screwed. Non wanting
to damage the cast iron frame, I tried to punch out the pins. I was
unsuccessful. In the end, I took the hammer and gave the stabilizer a good
whack. It shattered and I was able to remove it. I was really worried that the
jar would break the frame, but it didn't.... yet. The top of the frame had
another rigid bar, like the one on the bottom, which held the strikers. I
thought I could hammer it out like the bottom, but a fast whack, an "oops," and a string of explitives later, I had a broken frame. Thankfully, I had a container of plastic weld in the misc. drawer. This paused my project for a few days while the plastic weld set.
I bought a mini 77 key USB keyboard for this project. It was (and is) a little small, but it fit within the frame. I tried to use some of the mini - full-sized keyboards (81 and 88 key), but they either didn't fit or looked too gaudy.
The baseplate template was created out of cardboard and then used as a guide to cut from thin steel. The steel came from the side panel of an old AT case. The thin side panel was easy to cut, but the result was a slightly flimsy baseplate. I placed the original cardboard template onto the steel for added rigidity. I cut a rectangular hole in the baseplate for the CD-RW data and power cables.
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