Hi All,
I'm restoring the below Apple II Plus. I'm looking for a replacement "+" and "?" keycap. These were unfortunately missing when I recieved the unit.
This is the non-RFI keyboard, meaning they keys aren't slanted and sit flat if you take out and put them a flat surface.
This is a J-Plus Japanese system, but the keys from the regular II Plush will do just fine for me. Thanks!
You can sometimes find them for sale on eBay. That's probably your best bet. I don't know if Dr. Buggie has anything for a ][+, he normally has //e or Mac key caps and switches.
Apple2Online has a selection of key caps under Keyboards, Game Controllers, and Parts
Scrutinize any potential replacements carefully -- the keys on the J-Plus had a duller color and shinier finish from the keys on most Apple ]['s at the time. I think the closest match will be keycaps from the Datanetics version of the Apple ][ keyboard, but those are not especially plentiful.
Off-topic-ish: The J-Plus feels like a thoughtlessly-adapted design, like something that was thrown together by American engineers insight or input from Japanese users. It required a hard-to-remember POKE command to activate the Katana character set, and on top of that you needed to switch to INVERSE and type a forgettable CTRL+something to switch between Katakana and Roman. Most tellingly, three Katakana characters were omitted and three others were pointlessly duplicated in the character ROM. The character shapes for ハ and ミ are especially bizarre until you get used to them.
Thank, looks like Apple2Online only has the RFI slanted keeps. Will keep my eyes open.
Also thanks for all the J-Plus info! I haven't really had a chance to play around with it yet.
I was able to find a and get a second Apple II J-Plus which had more than half it's keys missing, but it did have the "+" and "?" keys which I needed. I'll pull the two keys of the keyboard which has half it's keys missing and put it on the other so that I have one system with full set of keys.
I'll keep the machine which has half the keys missing as a spare and hopefully one day I'll get my hands on a full J-Plus keyboard.