deskthority

Are you sure it's not a NiCd battery? Almost every old PC system with a leaky battery was the rechargable NiCd barrel battery. It's actually probably a lead-acid battery, which explains the corrosive leak. Definitely not lithium-ion (those came into use in the 2000's), and even NiCd may be too new....

Glad you like your new Cooler Master keyboard :mrgreen: I do, although it was part of the MassDrop order that Cooler Master initially forgot to send to manufacturing and then was delayed by the port strike, so there was a lot of gnashing of teeth along the way. :) BTW, will the replacement top case...

My battleship 122-key Model F has been my daily driver for nearly 3 years now, but I understand the appeal of the brown Cherry switches. There is something to be said for light (in all metrics) keyboards, but I find the sound of blues very annoying and don't like linear switches. Admittedly after b...

Admittedly I've never used a Model F, but I think there might be some second opinion bias moving against Cherry, no? Now that everyone and their prepubescent gamer brother has learned about mechanical keyboards and thinks that the only question is what color Cherry switch and how many blinding LEDs ...

I'm serious. It's not an April fools post.

This is probably not a very interesting post to most of you, but here goes anyway: I just got my first Cherry board (a CoolerMaster QuickFire Stealth with MX Browns) and I'm really, really pleased with it. This is not my first mechanical keyboard: I've used an IBM Model M for years, briefly had a Re...

On the other hand, apple's scissor switch keys wear out really fast and get mushy. I've been through a lot of Apple keyboards and haven't noticed this - but different models have have different feels (not sure if it's by design, or just differences in dome material between different OEMs or at diff...

I'm suspecting that it'll feel a lot like an HP calculator, which is not a bad thing. I think that would be too much of a departure from what people are used to (it's been 15 years since I pressed an HP calculator button, but IIRC they had quite a hard 'snap' and required considerable force... also...

PBT is tricky to mold, because it shrinks more as it cools down. It's especially prone to bending: banana shaped spacebars! So yeah, what sounds easy can be quite hard with PBT. It's not as well behaved stuff as docile old ABS. So does everyone just accept bannana shaped PBT spacebars from SP, or i...

I guess doubleshots would be a whole lot more work, since custom molds are needed? Also, I guess I'm sort of puzzled at the quality control issues with Dyesub DSA, since there's basically one mold for all the 1x keys - the only differences are color and what gets printed on. And yet people have foun...

Thanks :) At least it sounds like QC issues aren't exactly invitable, and if they happen they'll try to resolve them. It's those artsy shots that get me... so tempting, but they're like the Myspace selfie of keycaps... hiding any deformities. Show me a an in-focus, top down shot, so I can see the co...

Just wanted to get some opinions, as I've never purchased a 3rd party key caps set (never owned a Cherry board, actually, so this wasn't a possibility). Now that I have a Cherry compatible board on the way, I had some questions. How is the quality and consistency of SP's PBT keycaps? For example, I ...

I guess all side of this debate have been covered by now, but to put in my two cents, I think that for me the benefit of having dedicated keys is less than the benefit of being able to have a relatively small keyboard that requires minimal movement and no looking to reach every key. Basically I thin...

I was thinking about this today - a lot of pleasure derived from mechanical keyboards is about the sound that they make, and most people's focus is on the type of switches. But it seems to me that a lot of the sound is related to the resonant qualities of the keyboard case/frame. Maybe this is more ...

Vinyl dye works fine on dark plastics. I have used it in the past on PC case bezels, optical and floppy drive bezels, mice and keyboards. It also comes in a limited amount of colors, but they do have some decent beige/almond/light tan colors that you may find ideal. I know it hold up very well to w...

Thanks. Losing the keys on the edges is an idea. I also bind Caps to Control, but have used a Model M for a long time so I find the gap comfortable. I'm wondering if I would be smarter to just leave the keys be though

Do you have photos of the beige painted cases you mentioned?

Thanks. The case is black, so AFAIK vinyl dye is a no-go. Plastidip is effectively a form of paint, no? Just one that dries to a rubbery finish? I don't mind drilling and resoldering, but cutting the plate precisely is probably a bit difficult. I suppose I could just remove the middle switch, and ha...

I've never had a Cherry board, but jumped on the Massdrop for the CM Storm Stealth TKL that should ship in January. It's a bit early but I've already started thinking about what I can do with it. Fact is, I like old boards, and really dislike the 'black with tons of LEDs' look that is popular these ...

The PowerMac G3 All-in-ones and the ADB mouse pictured all match with the keyboard, age wise, and it's definitely an AppleDesign model (ie. boring, run-of-the-mill rubberdome from the late 90's).

Hmm... I wonder if a cut off fullsize Model M could work without the case ? That would obviate the need to try to glue the end of the case back on (really hard to make this look good, I suspect) and might have a cool cyberpunkish look. Almost 20 years ago in high school I used to use my hand-me-down...

Apple USB keyboard? It's very solid, scissor switch, and you can probably find one on eBay for under $50 since most people like the wireless TKL ones nowadays.

I have a problem. I like keyboards, but I don't want to spend thousands buying lots and lots of them. I've used a mid-80's Model M for years and honestly it's an amazing keyboard, but I keep spending time ogling other boards online. My biggest issue with the Model M is that it's huge, and I hardly e...

I looked into the patents covering beamspring and buckling spring capacitive, as well as membrane, and they either were never approved, have lapsed, or expired. The beamspring design by IBM was rejected for patent here in the US. The patent that explicitly covers buckling spring membrane keyboards ...

People's reactions to noise depend a lot on how they feel about what's making the noise. That's why the car cruising down the street blasting rap music is obnoxious to some people but (apparently) attractive to others. Same goes for engine noise in a supercar (people love it) vs in a boring car (peo...

I think it's hard to say - it depends a lot on price and how it's marketed. Price could be on the high end but you'd still need to recoup considerable development costs (nevermind the licensing...). Marketing wise you'd have to have something that appeals to people beyond the current DeskThority cro...

An early G80-3000?

I like the clean lines of it, at least from that angle. Nice austere look, but with a bit of color.

robo wrote:

IvanIvanovich wrote:

What keyboard is this? It looks really nice.

Ah, after some digging I guess it's an older Cherry. Probably easily recognizable to experienced keyboard people

Cool! That's great info. Bounce had never occurred to me. Out of curiosity (and rudimentary electronics knowledge) could this not have been solved with small capacitors to smooth out the voltage change? Or is that too slow or cumbersome?

Cool, thanks. I look forward to a lengthier screed should you find the strength to write one ;) Reliability was something that occurred to me but I assumed that plain old contact switches could be durable enough. I guess computers were not the cheap disposable items they are now and so things were b...

I recently discovered this site and the world of vintage keyboards, and I have a question: Looking over all these old keyboards, it's apparent that many of them use rather novel and complicated ways of registering a keypress. Unlike the seemingly obvious use of a 'normal' switch with conductive cont...