deskthority

I can speak positively for the Adesso T50. It's comfortably sized and smooth, although perhaps not as smooth as the Expert. It also has a normal scroll wheel and sells for about a third less than the Expert.

What's interesting is that the Teensy/Pro Micro is becoming a strange "local maximum." The home-brew ecosystem has revolved around Atmel chips for a long time, but they're expensive for the performance. I'm also a bit worried about long-term availability-- the PJRC site has "we have supplies til abo...

Why not cross it with the FSSK/FEXT style projects? Since you're ripping up the board anyway, why not slide a new PCB in?

I think there are a lot of more nuances beyond it. Compared to, say stamps or trading cards or coins, keyboards as a collectible have a distinct utility factor. If rare and exotic alone was enough, we'd be paying $1800 for odd rubber-dome boards. A lot of people are buying beamspring and Blue Alps b...

No chance Z, X and N are rotated 180 degrees?

It astonishes me to think of anyone having much positive sentiment to mid-90s Packard Bell anything. My experience with them was a Pentium 75 bought for the whole family in mid-1995. It had that keyboard or a very similar one. It also *ate* mice. They'd go unreliable after a few days or weeks. We'd ...

The 6511 I grabbed at a junk shop a few years ago definitely has the "inverse" stabs. I have a board, possibly a MTek K108, with Alps-mount SMK but the stabilizers are Costar-style. The odd thing is that it has an ANSI 2.25x left shift but the switch is positioned in the ISO location, so the switch ...

I don't get the "XT-F Enter as Numpad Enter" argument... considering it had that bizarre 1x3 numpad plus instead. You can definitely see the XT layout with very few adjustments in the 5251 Beamspring. That seems the more reasonable origin story. I tend to wonder if the XT layout would have been so m...

Could you put the guts into a (modified) Matias housing and use a SMD LED below the switch?

They go down quite a bit at quantity though. A bag of 200 is $60 delivered.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-OmniKey-102-Keyboard-White-Alps/324194384507?_trkparms=aid%3D1110001%26algo%3DSPLICE.SIM%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20131231084308%26meid%3D2abc74a207d648909e6e31c17e7a5a0b%26pid%3D100010%26rk%3D3%26rkt%3D12%26sd%3D184369407592%26itm%3D324194384507%26pmt%3D0%26noa%3D1%26pg%3D2...

Why not the eight-way arrow block as seen on the FK-9000, some Omnikeys, the Gateway 2000 Anykey, etc? Maybe even extend it 16-ways so we can finally have a "south by southwest" key (macro: down, down, left) Also, after looking at way too much stereo equipment of a certain vintage, a prominent "QUAR...

I like the concept of "programmable via a USB tool." I've always preferred Soarer's Controller over TMK/QMK because of the convenience of remapping. While a lot of hobbyist keyboards seem to be 75% or smaller, there are definitely a few large-PCB projects out there, like the GH-122 , Black Heart or ...

I'm intrigued. My favourite keycaps are stuck on a board I don't like (Box Navies are better as a concept than an actual thing) and my experience with custom Alps caps has been disappointing (Matias is now on year 5 of Real Soon Now, and the XDA blanks I bought and home-lettered faded terribly) Sugg...

I suspect honestly that they'll do gangbusters business. The fact it drops into the existing MX PCB and keycap ecosystem will cover for a lot of sins.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-NEW-MOUSE-Metal-Ball-for-Soviet-Computer-ES-1841-1991-Factory-packaging/353085004755?hash=item5235819bd3:g:0jQAAOSwQbVeyT3J If nothing else, this seller's listings have some pretty great teardown photos. On the one hand, I'm sort of intrigued if it has super-robust b...

The MCK-142 always looked compelling, but it doesn't come in ANSI. At least the Northgates seem to have a plate design amenable to an ANSI modification. I don't get why with the billion 3x4 macropads out there, nobody's doing a 2x6 explicitly designed to bolt to the left side of a keyboard, or a 2x1...

I think there's definitely some argument to be made here. The complicated-switch dragon chase: There's so much in there-- the differences between simplified and complicated, lubed and unlubed, pine and bamboo. How much of it is actually quantifiable and replicable, and how much of it is a "you'd lov...

I'm also interested in it as a short-run product... sort of like what WASD offered but with better materials quality.

You can actually get at least one set of okay PBT ALPS blanks now, so I'd be more than willing to drop USD50-70 on competently lettering them.

After the group buy here last year , I mounted mine in an 3rd generation Omnikey chassis with a Blackheart PCB. I found that a fair number of the switches didn't click properly when first installed, and required a bit of working to snap into position. I didn't notice this when I did a similar build ...

In the 225013 picture, the one on the right looks very Keytronic. That "It's almost a Model M" case with the little hooks in the LED panel area is distinctily theirs.

They have an arcade game convention here once a year (cancelled this year for obvious reasons) Last year they had one of these on display, not plugged in and off in a barren corner of the show. Could have at least used an interpretive placard.

Maybe it's the lower-case/fixed case switch you see on the "Blue Switch" Model Fs?

The Sherwood board is interesting; they were a famous American hi-fi company in the 50s and 60s. By the late 70s, their kit was mostly made by a firm called Inkel in South Korea. Wonder if they also made the keyboard.

Alps format Tai-Hao caps in true black-on-two-tone instead of that horrible Olivetti knock off, with the extra weird keys for an ANSI Omnkiey

Sell me the board I have now, but with better keycaps :P. An ANSI-modded Omnikey with a modern PCB and controller. * Normal 103-104 layout plus a side bank of 12 keys for macros. The left side bank is a great position for many macros or conveniences like media controls because it's still reachable w...

JIS screws often have a dot in the quadrants made by the cross.

I stripped too many of them on a Yamaha reciever. :/

If you can go mid-90s, the new Pro Intellimouse has the classic shape but comes in a colour that looks filthy and worn out the moment you take it out of the box.

Honestly, I want an ordinary 103-key USB unit in the modernized case but at a modest discount. It irks me that I can get the black one for $94 but the white-case and two-tone caps costs 104 plus postage. I had the old-layout 104, but gave it to a co-worker when I left my old job. The new 104 layout'...

Has anyone mentioned that Unicomp is dredgng some warehouse utems up for Black Friday?

https://www.pckeyboard.com/page/category/BLACK

They're presently advertising Bigfoot Fs for like 70USD, "refurbished in 1996".