deskthority

"Device 'PSoC SLP CY8C5888LT*-LP097' was successfully programmed at 09/22/2017 19:13:24." Ordered the Cypress device yesterday from RS for £7.69 which is silly cheap, and it arrived today. Awesome service from RS. What prompted me to try again was that I am on sick leave, bored, and recently was giv...

I'm personally striving for simplicity. I don't know why people waste their time with protocols and apps for configuring the layout. Especially when they are about to make a single board. Simple in use vs. simple implementation are often competing goals. I find that the goal simple-to-use drives up...

The fun think about keyboards is that they are pretty simple, so one doesn't need any kind of OS. You can do everything in the main loop. :) Ah, yes. That was true in the case of the Sinclair Spectrum I cut my coding chops on back in the eighties. The keyboard interface was literally the data lines...

Here's something I had not seen mentioned here before: NuttX Real-Time Operating System . It feels less intimidating to me than a hard-core minimal RTOS, resembles Linux, has a BSD licence, and appears to be very well supported and widely used. If it is good enough for Sony to use in their audio pro...

Hi DiodeHead, Thanks for the link. Slow progress: bathroom hacking takes priority over keyboard hacking!

... And DMA's Common Sense thread too, which is still ticking away...

Thanks for the answer HuBandiT. The Alt-Ctrl thread is very interesting reading, although the participants already hit the road at mach speed as they're experienced electronic engineers. I begin at pretty much walking pace, and with scarce free time to spare. NewbieHack has a lot of material for emb...

Hi DT'ers, I bought a Pack of 2 STM32f103c8t6 Minimum Development Board , and a ST-Link V2 programmer debugger with the intention of replacing the controller chip in a couple of of IBM PC-XT keyboards. I've dabbled with a few ATMEL Pro Micro things, with Soarer's Controller, and this works very well...

The TI99/4A missing a few keys, Thomas? You seemed to hesitate briefly with a gestural wtf?!

(Late to the party, sorry)

What about silicone oil? This is compatible with ABS and butyl rubber, because plumbing lubricant is silicone oil. There's also silicone grease too.

Not sure it's a good idea to use silicone oil or grease on rubber dome keyboards make of silicone domes.

Hi Zed, It's a pleasure to read about the degree of care and attention to detail you're lavishing on the design. The typographical "optical anomalies" actually make a difference, at least to my eye (used to be a graphic design and typography geek). Related I suppose to the debate raging elsewhere on...

Thanks Thomas, very nice review. The personal childhood connection with the machine adds a dimension that is often lacking when the reviewer concentrates only on the mechanical and electronic facts and figures -- much like cars and houses, these are things and places where people lived in, and grew ...

The seebart wiki library is vast, comprehensive, factual, diverse, awesome... But the keyboards in there are unobtainium, and it lacks the "shits & giggles" entertainment dimension that Thomas brings

I really appreciate these reviews, going from sublime, to ridiculous, to utter shit! The contrast between the extremes helps to define what it is that makes the best keyboards so desirable. Thanks Thomas.

So, ... at low volume, FR4 is better quality and a lot cheaper. Wow. Is it because of silver? Most likely to be the one-time cost of tooling. Only big production runs make the up-front tooling cost viable by spreading the cost over many units. The units themselves are probably dirt cheap, which is ...

Photos? Don't look Over here then! This might have dampened my collector enthusiasm from that moment on. And I have a bathroom to rebuild. Actually, it's the bathroom that has diverted me from keyboards. I will be back!

I work in an open-plan office, with lots of very noisy phone conversations all around, all day long. I have no compunction to silence the Kalashnikov clatter from my IBM 5291 in such an environment!

Genius!

I've got plenty of unfinished keyboards with which I could try this idea. Once I've done the bathroom... and the kitchen... bedroom... maybe when I retire

Yeah, I should illustrate with photos. I cut a thin sheet of neoprene in to thin slivers roughly 2mm x 2mm x 13mm, and squished them thinner by rolling between finger and thumb, and inserted them into the springs before they expand to fill the space. It might not be easily reversible, mind you -- fl...

Try ASCII value 10, which is line-feed (LF). The value 13 is carriage return (CR). Not sure whether the ASCII code is different for either keys on a keyboard -- they might be distinguished by scan-code, not the resulting character code. The sequence CR-LF usually terminates a line of text, Unix and ...

The one Bigfoot F that I dampened, not a "floss mod", but a "neoprene mod" (need to show pictures) had springs that ringed at different frequencies causing a dissonant typing cacophony: loud and tone-deaf too. Ignominious! The others are more tuneful, and I like that harmonious ping sound far better.

Congratulations! Quite a steep learning curve you climbed. I believe that a quite a few among us understand what you experienced when it sprung to life. The pleasure I get from using my restored 1980's keyboards at work and at home makes all the effort more than worth while.

I *love* the review! Thanks Tom.

@Chyros, Helvetica Syndrome? Calcium melting faces?! Where on earth do you find this sh...stuff?!

Neoprene foam sheets so far have proven to be perfect. How does this look? 1/8" Neoprene 2mm & 12mm hole punches The hole punches are suitable. You need to search for neoprene foam (or sponge) sheet, 1/16th inch thick, without adhesive. I tried to search for it on eBay in America, but it seems the ...

Using sharpened hole punches can give very neat results. Sharpening is necessary, stock cutters expect to be whacked with a sledgehammer, which is overkill for foam! The post shows me gently cutting polyethylene foam with a twist of the fingers only. I discarded polyethylene in favour of neoprene f...

That is astounding good fortune! Well done, congratulations indeed.

Hmm... Maybe an industrial prototyping service might offer a solution?

This is a big challenge when trying to organise a production run of enough parts to build, for example, a dozen or so sets of caps for keyboards. The injection moulding process (and molding, my spelling is tinged with French influences: moulage ) has very low cost per part, but has a very high up-fr...

If only IBM buckling spring spherical caps were available, and with those legends too... If you only need a single mold for 1u, then maybe it is not that expensive to do if there are enough people interested? I encourage you to look into it. I did consider it, and a few practical considerations gav...