The Alphasmart Neo

Hello writers!

Today I want to talk a little bit about the Alphasmart Neo and how I customized mine. I've seen a lot of people talk about how great Alphasmart products are, and I've seen pictures of some modded/customized ones but I haven't found anyone who documented the process very well. So when I customized mine, I took a lot of notes and pictures in hopes that I could help anyone like me who wants to undertake this project. If you're just here to see the process of customizing my Neo, skip down to the heading "The Project." And if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment and ask! I use Wix for my business so I check the app on my phone regularly, so I'll definitely see comments pretty quickly.

I'm a big fan. Also I miss those glasses, that was a few prescriptions ago but they looked so good.

If you’ve never heard of Alphasmart products, they’re basically really simple computers designed for education. Instead of a full computer with a monitor and internet and all that good stuff, Alphasmarts have just a basic keyboard and a small LCD display. There are a few different Alphasmart devices: the Alphasmart 3000, Dana, Neo and Neo 2 are most common, but I don’t know if there are any other models I haven’t heard of. They all have slight differences, but today authors use them all for the same basic purpose: writing without distractions. Since there’s no internet and no big screen, this little device is basically like a digital typewriter. You can’t waste hours scrolling Reddit when you’re using a device that can’t access Reddit!

The Alphasmart Neo in all its glory.

I bought my first Alphasmart Neo a few years ago on eBay for about $20. I actually got it from someone who lived just an hour or so from my city, so I met him in a coffee shop and we chatted about NaNoWriMo for a while. I used it a bit and enjoyed it, but I didn’t take much time for writing and eventually my Neo sat in storage for a year or two, and when I went back to use it I found some of the keys had stopped working. So before NaNoWriMo 2020 I bought a replacement Neo on eBay, this time for around $25. That year I used my Neo to win NaNoWriMo and I had fallen back in love with this amazing little device.

The Neo runs on three AA batteries, and can last for hundreds of hours. If you use it pretty regularly, you can probably go about a year or so between battery changes. Or if you’re an idiot like me, and you leave the Neo plugged into your computer overnight a time or two too many, you’ll replace the batteries more often. Let me explain.

The Neo doesn’t have files that you can transfer via USB. Instead, it has eight file slots that you can type in, and to get that work onto a PC you have to plug the Neo in with a printer cable (the kind of USB with a square plug on one end) and hit the “send file” button. This makes the Alphasmart send your file one letter at a time, like it’s typing into the document on your computer. You can send your files into any program you prefer, like Scrivener or Word, because it’s just emulating keystrokes. However, when the Neo is plugged in via USB it’s also turned on, and if your computer goes to sleep the Neo stays on, constantly draining power. So if you hypothetically leave it plugged in for a week before you remember to unplug it because you don’t maintain a good writing schedule, you may come back to a Neo with dead batteries. But after the second or third time this happens, maybe you’ll get smart and put a Post-It note on your desk that says “UNPLUG ALPHASMART” in big Sharpie lettering.

ANYWAY…

If you prefer to type directly into your computer, or hand write your work and type it in later, or type on your phone and email it to yourself, or any of a million other methods of writing your novel, then by all means continue doing what works for you. But for me having ADHD, the Alphasmart Neo is the only way I can get myself to focus on writing for any length of time without getting distracted. I set my Neo to use big letters on-screen so I can only see three lines at a time, which is roughly a sentence if it’s not a big run-on like this one. That’s just enough for me to fix spelling mistakes if I notice them, but not enough for me to start proofreading and line editing when I’m supposed to be drafting. That’s another perk of the Neo: if you’re someone who gets distracted editing and doesn’t actually finish writing, the limited screen size is a huge help because it makes it nearly impossible to edit. Instead you can get the draft done, send it to your computer, and then edit it in whatever software you choose like Word or Scrivener.

The Project

So now that I’ve convinced you that you should try writing with an Alphasmart Neo, what if you don’t like the OD green it comes in? I’ll admit the green isn’t as ugly as it looks in pictures, but it’s also not my favorite color, and I’ve wanted to give my Neo a custom paint job ever since I got my first model a few years ago. Luckily, it’s actually not super hard to do, but it is time consuming. Painting mine took about two days, and honestly it should take three. I was just impatient and didn’t wait the full 24 hours to let the paint fully dry before I put all the pieces back together, and that shows in the scratches and fingerprints on my Neo now. I also was fortunate enough to have two Neos so I had spare parts if anything broke. Fortunately most everything on the Neo is pretty sturdy, but I did break a couple of the scissor switches under the keys due to carelessness, so if you don’t have spare parts just be careful.

Here's a couple images of how I decided on the color scheme. I basically just took an image of the Neo from Google image search and edited it in Procreate on my phone to try out different colors. As you can see on the right, I considered leaving the top row and some other important keys green and not painting them, so I could still see the markings, but I ultimately decided to just paint everything and trust myself to memorize the key placement. I had a few other color scheme ideas but these were my two favorites. I've always loved cotton candy pink and blue, and I wanted my Neo to be more bright and unique than just black.

The process began with taking my Alphasmart apart completely. First I took the batteries out, then I took all the key caps off the keyboard. I found the easiest way to do this was to pry the cap up from the bottom edge until it popped, then slide it up to unhook the top part of the scissor switch. There are several different sizes of key caps, so try to pay attention to what goes where. All the keys on the top row and the arrow keys have scissor switches that point horizontally instead of vertically, and some of them have smaller switches than others. I used small plastic baggies to keep them separated.

Some of the scissor switches stayed on the keycaps, some stayed on the keyboard. I took them all off before painting.

An example of the sideways switches on the top row. These are also smaller than the normal keys so keep track of them.

After I got all the keys off, it was time to take the electronics out. This part was kind of scary, but it’s actually not that hard. Just unscrew the back, and when you open it up you’ll see the boards that control everything. You need to unfasten the ribbon cables that connect the screen and the keyboard to the main circuit and take everything out. There are a few screws holding the boards in, and getting the keyboard out is kind of hard. It hooks into the plastic body in several places, so you have to pry it out carefully to make sure you don’t break anything. The keyboard comes out of the front, and be really careful getting the ribbon cable through the slot to take it all the way out.

This is what it looks like when you first open it up. Unhook the ribbon cables very carefully, and you have to kind of bend the body a bit to get the keyboard out of those three slots at the bottom.

After removing the keyboard. That smaller cable attaches the screen. Once you take out the screws and remove the board, there's a few more screws holding the screen in.

After I got the whole thing taken apart, next was the really time-consuming bit: sanding everything. I wanted to sand all the letters off the keys and use a medium grit sandpaper to make sure the paint stuck well to the plastic, and it took absolutely ages to sand each piece individually. I also sanded the outside of the body pieces to make sure the blue paint would stick well. I love that this gave it a sort of grainy feel after it was painted, my Alphasmart almost feels like wood now.

A few of the sanded keys.

The next day, I laid all the pieces out on a tarp and spray painted them. I used an app on my phone to edit a picture of a Neo I found online to see what colors I liked, and I decided on pink and blue since I love that color combination. It always reminds me of cotton candy and makes me happy. I used Rustoleum spray paint, and a clear matte coat from the same brand. I did three layers of paint, letting it dry for about 30-60 minutes between coats, then did two layers of clear coat to seal it all in. So overall painting took a lot of the day, but it was mostly just waiting so I worked on other things between coats.

I used painters tape to cover the instructions on the back so I can still read them.

The keys are so light it was hard to keep from blowing them away with the spray paint. Also I should have spread the tarp out more, I had some overspray on the porch.

After the last clear coat, I waited a couple of hours then brought the pieces inside. You’re supposed to let them dry for 24 hours, but I was impatient so I went ahead and put it all back together anyway. I don’t mind the fingerprints and scratches, because I always knew it probably wouldn’t turn out 100% perfect and I think it just adds a little bit of character.

The colors turned out so good! I peeled off the painters tape while the paint wasn't fully dry because I was afraid it could make the paint flake if it was fully dry.

Putting the keys back on the keyboard was a little harder than I had expected, but I found the easiest way was to start with the scissor switch on the back of the key, then drag the key down into position from the top. This should hook the top part (the side with the two little T-shape parts) of the switch into place, then you can push firmly on the bottom part of the key to pop the bottom of the switch into place. Again, somewhat tedious and time consuming, so watch a movie in the background or something. I have seen some people make stickers to mark the keys, but I specifically wanted to leave the letters blank to help as I learned touch typing. So instead I just used some quick-drying top coat nail polish to layer up little blobs on the home row keys F and J and I left the rest blank. I actually marked the “Clear File” key with a small pink dot using a pink Sharpie permanent marker, because it’s the one key on the home row that I use a lot but is also hard to find. Most of the other keys I need are easy to find (for example, on/off is the top left corner, send file is the top right, different files are the 8 keys after the on/off key, and I don’t really use the others like spell check).

All done, and I couldn't be more proud!

And that’s it! After putting it all back together, all that was left to do was type “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” to make sure all the keys worked, and now I have a totally unique keyboard! I absolutely love how it looks and feels now. Painting the Neo made the keys feel totally different, because they were originally kind of slick but the sanding and paint made them more tactile, almost like a wood grain kind of feel and I absolutely love it. The nail polish bumps on the home row are way bigger and more pronounced than most keyboards, which makes them much easier to feel so I can quickly get my hands back in place when I move them. And it’s just so fun looking at my cotton candy pink and blue keyboard when I type now instead of the old drab green.

Painting my Neo was a big project, and I won’t lie and say it was easy. It was definitely time consuming, especially the sanding part, and it was terrifying taking it all apart and not knowing if I could get it all back together and if I did, whether it would work properly or not. For a while the on/off button was kind of finnicky and didn’t always work unless I pushed it really hard, but thankfully it works better now that I popped the cap off and put it back on so I assume the cap was just slightly misaligned. Anyway, if you can take the risk, I definitely recommend this project. It’s not as difficult as it seems, and there’s no soldering or anything like that, and it was a lot of fun. But if you can’t afford to replace your Neo if something went wrong, then I would say don’t risk it. It’s up to you if you think having a nice colorful digital typewriter is worth the risk of maybe having to spend another $25 to replace it if you break something.

Have a great day!

- Michael Wolfe Price