deskthority

What's happened to KBtalKing? The forum topics exist but they all redirect back to generic cool3c URLs, and no images load, even ones hosted on Photobucket. (Even if you follow a link to a Photobucket image direct from Google, it times out.)

http://kbtalking.com.cn/ exists, and I see they have their own switch — I have some of these and they're just Greetech switches as I recall (KBtalKing brand on the top, Greetech brand on the bottom).

But the community seems to have vanished!

It's a good thing that many of alps.tw's photos are on the wiki safe. I assume there are still photo sets I'd not copied over to the wiki, and they'll be gone now. Also, I wasn't trying to translate the pages (we still don't have anyone here willing to translate Chinese or talk to Chinese/Taiwanese manufactures in Chinese) so most pages were stubs that referenced back to cool3c. The forum page text is still there, for now anyway.

Surely someone must have some idea what's happened to KBtalKing?

I tried to log into KBtalKing to ask alps.tw himself, but they've changed the login system and the old-style login page isn't working any more.

I assume there are more sets of alps.tw photos still to rescue and move to the wiki, but the wiki won't even let me find where I've linked to pages on that site.

Peoms can be written in any language, but it can only be perfectly written in Chinese. If you can read Chinese, you know I am not exaggerating.

Infinitesimally closer …

I have finally managed to log into cool3c.com, but I can't find any private message facility or any other way to contact alps.tw to ask him what's happened to KBtalKing, or more importantly, to fix his Photobucket settings so that all his images load again. I figured that if I could actually log in, I could at least send him a message, but come to think of it, I'm not sure that was ever possible.

It's not like I just can't read the Chinese text — there are just no options. This is what I see:

https://www.cool3c.com/author/alps.tw

There are no more options available when logged in — no profile, no contact details, nothing. What sort of heap of poo is this site? (Google refuses to translate and Microsoft Translator is incapable of translating HTTPS pages.)

I have at least found how to get the outbound links out of the wiki to all of his topics, and gradually I'm recovering the last of the images. However, I still can't translate the text. These are all the links:

w/index.php?title=Special:LinkSearch&li ... article%2F
w/index.php?title=Special:LinkSearch&li ... article%2F

Two separate lists because older ones are HTTP and newer ones are HTTPS, and sometimes the same topic appears under both. These are all pages that need properly translating.

@Daniel Beardsmore
In fact, there is a hyperlink for contact detail at the very bottom of the page, in fine font though, here are the emails I've copied for you.

癮科技內容合作/建議請找編輯部：editor@cool3c.com
癮科技廣告/商業合作請找廣告部：ad.service@cool3c.com
好東C/壞朋友合作請找電商部：uccu@cool3c.com
線上課程慕課合作請找：mooc@cool3c.com
內容農場終結者 Content Party 合作請找：service@contentparty.org

The bloody Traditional Chinese Characters, thank God we can read them by instinct.

I don't know who or what cool3c is, but it seemed to be some kind of forum hosting service; now, I have no idea at all. KBtalKing had its own subdomain, kbtalking.cool3c.com. alps.tw isn't an administrator at cool3c: he is simply a forum member. cool3c aren't simply going to hand over the contact details of a user to a stranger. There are photos of him now, due to his involvement with iRocks, but I don't even know his real name. I've considered trying to reach him via iRocks, but they're not a very co-operative company and my previous attempts to communicate him have via Google Translate been very difficult.

I have no idea who ran KBtalKing, nor why it's been absorbed into cool3c. I don't know if it ever hosted other forums besides KBtalKing.

It's all a mystery to me, as I can't read it.

KBtalKing had their own keyboards made with their logo on, including very well-known models such as the KBT Pure and KBT Race. Another Chinese-language forum Keyboard Cheer also had Vortex make them keyboards, such as the popular KBC Poker series (now iKBC). KBtalKing now seems to be gone, and nobody knows who they were, nor what happened to them.

Ah: http://uk.pcmag.com/webcom/90124/news/p ... e-internet

It's not the kbtalking.cool3c.com→cool3c.com redirect that broke all the images, but Photobucket themselves!

Can anyone work out what switch is in this Zebra keyboard?

https://article.cool3c.com/bookmark/inf ... 84?check=1

Although alps.tw classified them with codes, he's using the names instead here. These are the names and classification codes:

https://www.cool3c.com/article/8366

The picture shows yellow switches which implies T5 (which appears to be named) but the wording implies some other switch, but I can't conclusively determine what. (They can also come with Tai-Hao APC series switches, as alps.tw mentions, and as can be seen here: https://webptt.com/m.aspx?n=bbs/Key_Mou ... A.D39.html )

Sadly there are frequently details in his articles that are given verbally but not depicted, that need to be translated and added to the wiki.

(Why does it have Windows keys? It's clearly a Macintosh keyboard.)

Daniel Beardsmore wrote: ↑Can anyone work out what switch is in this Zebra keyboard?

https://article.cool3c.com/bookmark/inf ... 84?check=1

Although alps.tw classified them with codes, he's using the names instead here. These are the names and classification codes:

https://www.cool3c.com/article/8366

The picture shows yellow switches which implies T5 (which appears to be named) but the wording implies some other switch, but I can't conclusively determine what. (They can also come with Tai-Hao APC series switches, as alps.tw mentions, and as can be seen here: https://webptt.com/m.aspx?n=bbs/Key_Mou ... A.D39.html )

Sadly there are frequently details in his articles that are given verbally but not depicted, that need to be translated and added to the wiki.

(Why does it have Windows keys? It's clearly a Macintosh keyboard.)

question 1：it seems like the Alps Yellow switch,but haven't point out switch name.

So far as I can tell, he explains very clearly which switches it is. However, the switch names get lost in translation as does the rest of the grammar. If you read the second link which gives all the switch names, then you should be able to understand which switches he's referring to, but only if you can read traditional Chinese.

Basically he's referring to "half" switches (by this he means those with a narrow movable contact pressing, which here will be type T5 I assume, as those are the ones that are often yellow) but also regular "mantis foot" switches (those with a full-width pressed metal contact) which covers most Alps clones). Due to the way that Google Translate mangles the grammar, I cannot understand what he's saying about them.

More details here:

https://www.cool3c.com/article/5814

This is the well-known [wiki]Strong Man kids keyboard[/wiki] — identical product internally, and this page suggests that it has Mini-DIN-4 sockets and a Mini-DIN-4 to DIN-5 converter cable. That is, the only difference between Strong Man's compact Mac and PC keyboards is which cable they shipped and what's programmed into the chip. Just guessing based on Google Mistranslate and the photos of the Zebra keyboard. (There are no photos of the switches at all on this page.)

hey guys im chinese and im new to mechanical keyboard. so hope you guys would give me some advice in the future. 谢谢大家