A Reflotron/Marquardt board that's still weirding me out

[Reflotron]

Dear Deskthority,

I have been lurking for quite a while now and figured I should finally get around to introducing myself so that I can take advantage of your vast knowledge of keyboard lore in a more active way .

My keyboard story is one that is still weirding me out a little. I am a heavy-duty LaTeX user working in the humanities with a way-too-small desk and loads of books heaped across the room, the walls, etc. So I've always had the desire for the perfect keyboard, that is

• as high quality as I - a poor scientist - can afford it,
• as small as it gets,
• capable of all kind of strange Emacs-editor keystroke goodness., which means at least a better positioned ctrl-key and NKRO.

So I have been searching for that one perfect board.

When I first encountered mechanical keyboards about a year ago I immediately went for the Model M, since I thought I could not possibly go wrong with that except for the size (well there's the SSK, but, lo, the €€). I picked one up pretty cheaply from a neighbor. It was in great condition (sorry, gave it away for a friend's birthday who was the same age as the keyboard and did not take any pics) but I immediately had problems with it. I like my keyboards loud but I found clicky switches really don't do it for me, same for cherry blues and the like. The thing is I practically grew up pounding Cherry MY switches as the editor for my local church's bulletin, so the preference for beating stiff linear switches is somehow infused in my fingers by now. After some more erring from the road (I actually went back to a MY board for a couple of months for the nostalgic feel of it and had a IBM Spacesaver II that died almost instantly), I found this:

WP_20160607_001.jpg (454.58 KiB) Viewed 1774 times

It is small and portable, with a spiral cord, it has all the right keys (control instead of capslock!) and none of the unncessary ones, a nice metal backplate, it's got those lovely integrated locklights and some rather stiff linear switches. It is – and here I really wonder how I ever ended up with this - a Reflotron 1248715 (= Marquardt Mini white) with Italian layout that was originally bundled with a medical device. I had somehow found the DT wiki page I linked to before and thought it might be what I had desired, and, well: yes it is! And even more strangely I happened to chance upon it again at an Italian IT recycler's page a couple of days later. It is now my daily driver for some two months. So, ahem, Thank you Deskthority for making the world (or at least my desk) a better place.

That being said there's still room for improvement. For instance the keycaps don't have any bumps for touch-typing and some are rather faded. The wiki tells me the Marquardt stems are Cherry-compatible, but the keycaps on my board seem to be some lower profile version. Would anybody know where such caps could be had - or would Cherry regulars fit on that board too? As a someone who is regularly switching layouts for work reasons (German, US, Italian, Ancient Greek, Hebrew, you name it) I don't care much for printed caps or any particular key arrangement at all (except for that control key), so Ideally I would leave all the alphanumericals blank.

So thanks everybody for that garden of keyboard enthusiasm you cherish. I might just have another one of those seeds planted on my desk now and will surely be coming back for more.

[hypkx]

Last year I had also such a keyboard, I can say cherry dye subs are not compatible, I cant say if other keycaps will work.

[Morituri]

If I could ask a question:

Why is 'small' such a strong preference? I have always considered a numpad, and an arrow cluster separate enough from both the typing area and the numpad that it's easy to find by touch, to be a convenience. But absolutely every custom keyboard project I see is focused on making a keyboard as small as possible, even leaving out things I consider essential or moving them to funky hard-to-use locations that require modifier keys.

I think the keyboard you found is very nice-looking though too small for my tastes. but Cherry keycaps mounted on Marquardt stems definitely do 'clack' on the mounting plate before they bottom out. You can type on them but unless your touch is very light indeed, the bottom of each keystroke feels like you're hitting a rock.

[face]

Small keyboards offer a bit more space on your desktop. Also, the travel of your right hand (lefthanders don't have this problem) is far less if you are using a TKL or a 60% solution.

Also, they look nice. Personally, I don't use the Numpad or the Funktion-Keys and like my cursor keys to be WASD or IJKL, so there is no point of a fullsize-keyboard to me.

[Reflotron]

I have actually tried to use some old cherry caps I had with the Marquardt in the meantime - and that nearly broke the board. So I should have heeded your advice without experimenting...

Small keyboards offer a bit more space on your desktop. Also, the travel of your right hand (lefthanders don't have this problem) is far less if you are using a TKL or a 60% solution.

Also, they look nice. Personally, I don't use the Numpad or the Funktion-Keys and like my cursor keys to be WASD or IJKL, so there is no point of a fullsize-keyboard to me.

I can only second that. My desk is small and I need lots of room for books, papers and an ereader. And since I do most of my work on Linux or within the Emacs editor there's really not much use I have for the extra keys on "full size" keyboards. Outside of some occasional gaming I could do without the arrow-keys, too, since the traditional unix key bindings dont require them (vi using hjkl, emacs ctrl-fbpn for cursor movement).
Actually I would also do away with my trackball to have even more space available and less need for my hands to leave the keyboard. A pointing stick would suffice - but where's the 60% keyboard with that? I put up a request for the tex yoda on Massdrop - but that seems to be the only one?!