thx, good to know

Much appreciated yourself too!

I've received the board 2 days ago, so i think i can share the experience.
Firstly, the plastic case is the worst thing about this keyboard. It flexes and screeches a lot, and i feel like it's giving an ugly resonance when bottoming out. Also, i can agree that they fell a bit like alps (loong travel and easy to brutally bottom out), which i don't like at all since I've been typing on a low profile ML board for last few months.
However, It turned out that my local store had some nicely sized o-rings, so i bought a few of them to test out if they fit on keycaps and aren't too stiff. It turned out to be a great mod, it dampened the ugly bottom out sound giving a nice bump instead and the travel became a lot shorter. Right now the dampened browns have to be my favorite switch for all-around use.

Do you not find the key travel too short with o rings ? I mean at least on my one the keys are more low profile than your standard MX cap.

hm, curious myself, have ordered o-rings; might take a while for them to arrive.
But actually the top-heavy part is what struck me most (as in, the way it occurs to me is that the tactility is pretty far up with quite a bit of travel below it, like perhaps at 1/5th of the way down there's the (start of the) tactile point, and on the way up it's at about 2/5th; very noticeable when slowly&softly pushing just one key while watching it, multiple times); not really digging that so far, was really hoping it'd be lower, probably misread. Theory vs reality.
Ps; time to edit your 'favourite switch' then
@ andrew, what's 'your' one? These have smaller caps afaik, will know when I start swapping (prob tomorrow). staring at the board they look regular sized, perhaps I'm confusing the light\thinness with smallness.
you've also got an mx11800 apparently, with low profile caps; now I'm pulling, can't stand this *edit: nope, at least 'left arrow' is bog standard size on this one.

regarding the 'mint' condition btw, the other case has a small dent, and both cases have slight discolouring on the left-hand side below the spacebar, and on the trackball area; slightly yellowish like a smoker was on the ball 24/7. Caps seem washed btw, the lasering is slightly wearing when stared at from close up.

Yes, the travel became a lot shorter, it may be too shallow for these used to BS or ALPS. The o-ring is a few tenths of milimeter apart from the actuation point, so i bottom almost every time i hit the key, but it is shortening the way back, so the whole motion needed for pressing and releasing the button has shortened a lot. I feel this is more comfortable for my fingers as well as speeding up key spamming in Starcraft 2 a lot

Mine arrived one week ago, but the person who received them at the office put it in a secured locker and went on holidays with the key. That's quite frustating.

@zulios, didn't mean to offend btw; but that was basically my response to reading your situaton (and I couldn't type since I had my boards unplugged and caps strewn about), sucks, I feel for you. At least it won't get nicked

on those caps.. funny to notice how easily they come off; on the only other cherry I have, an MY with doubleshots, they sit *tight*, so much so that they've already become slightly damaged by the paperclip-based puller I copied from someone (have pulled them twice before though, so does add up).
Less funny to notice that the spacebar on one or the other is different on one mounting point by a few mm! And right shift doesn't fit, and scroll-lock sticks out (doesn't seem too bad since it differentiates that way); very logical but just hadn't occurred to me until I was done. Wasn't planning on using DS's on these anyhow, but when I noticed that ctrl and alt were the same size, and that both sets were iso, I thought 'perfet match' and went in.
The blacker keys do work nicely with the trackball, and the feel I'm just now testing, not sure yet. Quite alright that F5/6 and F7/8 are now greyish to get a better visual reference for the all important F4, F5 and F2; was the deciding factor for diving in actually. Sore thumb will remain the right shift, but the whole look doesn't really mash anyway, original is very clean and soft looking, just qwertz.
*Edit: to clarify: It's the stems that make the fit tight on the MY board, and I figured that was normal; but these brown stems fit just nice, with both caps.

I love the trackball as well, but it as someone said it has too low DPI. I use another mouse for gaming, that I've tuned down to 500dpi (the lowest possible) and still the trackball has too low sensitivity.

Does anyone know how to make it move faster, without altering the speed of my gamingmouse ? The mouse speed setting in Windows 7 is not an option, it fucks up the mouseaccel in games a lot.

I know this is a longshot, but what the hell, that's what forums are for, right?

You know my above rant originally included stuff about that, usage of a low-dpi ball like this one in combination with a mouse w.r.t. gaming and pixelprecision.. but removed it 'cause I thought nobody would give a rats ass.
Anyway, one way to go about it (though ofcourse you'll lose pixelprecision on the ball since you'll be upping windows sens for that) is to use AutomaticMouseSwitcher, BUT, that will only work if your regular mouse is not recognised as a 'generic hid input device' but as a 'brandname blabla optical/laser mouse' (so a unique identifier basically). Will need you to plug/unplug your trackball afaik; 'cause how that sw works is it'll load your mouse settings for that specific device upon connection.
also, mouseaccell, uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhl.
*edit; awrite, on mouseaccell, that was harsh, just a matter of taste. Realised while taking a nice long dump that mouse accelleration might actually work nicely on a trackball, which would be the only good reason for using the above mentioned application, setting accell to on on the ball, and off on the mouse; also realised that that was probably what you meant in the first place
Would definitely discourage setting even the trackball sens to >6/11 since interpolation is just that and will always harm precision/reliability (esp since afaik no windows setting allows for a 2:1 translation of hand to mouse, so all above 6/11 (i.e. 1:1) will crap on reliable translation of movement); which was the basis for the above statements.
Myself I'm just using 6/11 for the trackball on 1680/1050, meaning it doesn't get that much use

Could anyone compare the size of caps from MX11800 to some other cherry keycaps? I'm confused that some label them as low profile and i don't have any other cherry boards to compare with atm.

the top rows are flatter than usual

mintberryminuscrunch wrote:the top rows are flatter than usual

I'm curious as well, is that what andrewjoy (as well as differing sources around gh/dt) was referring to?
Looking at the ones right here, one with the original caps vs the one with cherry ds's; it looks as if the main block inc arrows is normal sized, and all the others (numpad, esc, f-keys, page-block, print-block) are smaller; that's the deal?

off wrote:

mintberryminuscrunch wrote:the top rows are flatter than usual

I'm curious as well, is that what andrewjoy (as well as differing sources around gh/dt) was referring to?
Looking at the ones right here, one with the original caps vs the one with cherry ds's; it looks as if the main block inc arrows is normal sized, and all the others (numpad, esc, f-keys, page-block, print-block) are smaller; that's the deal?

yes, they are row3 (funktion row,numpad,print,..)

'row3'
thanks! explains why half the board seemed to look differently w normal caps

Very quick and dirty solution for scrolling/middle mouse button support with AutoHotkey:

Code: Select all

RButton & LButton::Send {MButton}
RButton Up::Send {RButton}

It has a lot of flaws, but I thought I'd share it anyway, since not being able to do any scrolling with this trackball is getting on my nerves, although I like it apart from that. The script basically just emulates the middle mouse button. Just press and hold the right mouse button, and then press the left one. It should at least be OK for browsing.

Lustique wrote:

Code: Select all

RButton & LButton::Send {MButton}
RButton Up::Send {RButton}

doesn't it 'need' an
RButton::return
Nope,

"An "Up" hotkey without a normal/down counterpart hotkey will completely take over that key to prevent it from getting stuck down. One way to prevent this is to add a tilde prefix (e.g. ~LControl up::)

On a related note, a technique similar to the above is to make a hotkey into a prefix key. The advantage is that although the hotkey will fire upon release, it will do so only if you did not press any other key while it was held down. For example:

LControl & F1::return ; Make left-control a prefix by using it in front of "&" at least once.
LControl::MsgBox You released LControl without having used it to modify any other key."

It doesn't even need the 'up'. So quick n dirty, but functional (for me just for middleclick not scroll though)!
Alternatively, the script here seems to work, though will need an edit to activate on rmb+lmb instead of on special x2.
*edit: I should emphasize, that link enables rolling the ball to scroll.

Lustique wrote:Very quick and dirty solution for scrolling/middle mouse button support with AutoHotkey:

Code: Select all

RButton & LButton::Send {MButton}
RButton::Send {RButton}

It has a lot of flaws

One flaw I'd realised last night.. no right mouse button drag.
It's obvious, but I'd not thought of that. Shame since I immediately kept that plan to further refine. So for me it'll probably be using either 0/ins or ./del from the numpad.

separate post since it's good news:

scrollwheel fakery!
Just tested MouseWheelEmulator, by blahman, that works nicely with the ball, and supports multiple scroll-output methods for differing apps. It triggers on a near simultaneous left+right mouseclick, then hold and drag to scroll; could do with a remap to NumPadEnter for this board/ball/buttons

It doesn't support horizontal scrolling as 'mouseclick wheelright/left', but that is easy to implement (autohotkey has probably gotten those functions since after he's written it), so I did, and this allows firefox L/R scroll.:

^RECOMMENDED.
However, do use the On/Off toggle when gaming; I noticed having it on while gaming can fsck with aim.


Also found another option, DragToScroll, tested but not immedtatelly in working condition here, and meant as 'gesture/swipe'- not a succes on this trackball for me, nor my mouse. at all. has lots of code to learn from though, if so inclined.

Small tips for scrollwheels:
using ALT-scroll gets ministeps in firefox
using SHIFT-scroll gets horizontal scrolling in openoffice calc
Lang's SHIFT-scroll to horizontal scrol for firefox

Will probably be updating this post with more options, so as to keep my postcount a bit lower and overview easier. So if interested in a scrolllution for these or other trackballs without scrollwheels, do check back.

On another note, need a windows or menu/app key on your board? autohotkey winkeyless fix:




See HERE for the now proper thread where you can find more and leave feedback and improvements etc.

AS you scan see from the photos the caps on this board and the branded compaq one are not as deep as normal MX caps

MX 11800 on the left




and to show you the size of the stem again on the left



also notice that at least the ones on my one are PBT

andrewjoy wrote:are PBT

good catch! same here

*edit: BUT beware, not all caps are PBT it seems; the keys that have more than one stem (rightshift, space, enter, backspace, numpad-+, numpad-enter, numpad-0) are much thicker, have no 'pbt' text on the bottom; and another tell-tale sign of different production technique, they don't have the stem-mount-plussign bending inwards, see pic above to see that on pbt the plus is slightly rounded; when you see the other caps you'll notice.
Those other caps are probably ABS, but honestly I have no clue; just saying you might want to check before you dump all into very hot water for dyeing, ABS no likey.

*edit2: and to sum up, as I noted higher up, the keys on this board are normal profiles, just that some are a different row's profile. Specifically: (numpad, esc, f-keys, page-block, print-block) are Row3. According to MB-C. Thnx!