Re: Great/Interesting Finds
Posted: 22 Mar 2022, 15:57
Wish its hall effect keeb as I really want one but ITW is aswell cool, I also won one from seller's auctions and its in the mail still, lets see if we could convert it.
I changed my order to the beige one before he sent the blue. No binding on mine! In fact, it’s pretty darn nice to type on. Good crunchy feel, nice light weighting. I did swap some springs around, harvesting from the numpad, as a few alphabetical keys were registering without a click, but overall it’s a great board for £20. I can’t stop using it. It’s the keyboard equivalent of cracking my knuckles.Go-Kart wrote: ↑17 Mar 2022, 22:17Well, I actually don't mind the key feel Kinda bindy where you'd expect though. Two of the caps/barrels are pretty dry and they just stay depressed - need lube'n! My favourite thing about this board is the fact that it comes with a floppy disk. I miss floppy discs.Palatino wrote: ↑13 Mar 2022, 16:31Never mind - I just bought one rather than risk they ran out (when I sent through an offer there were 7 competing offers - clearly a lot of interest) £24 is a good price to try a new switch. I passed up the chance to get an Alps Buckling Spring board recently which I half regret, but they are said to be heavier than Model M springs, whereas Syncan are lighter, which suits me better.
PXL_20220317_211156518.jpg
I think they're a little less thocky than honeywells, but also bit lighter. Still very nice! Definitely interested in converting this one
Sadly, it looks to me like some of the extra keys on these 'Heroic' keyboards won't be usable via Soarer's converter. For example, the 'stop' button (above F7) sends E0 44, which (according to hid_listen) Soarer's initial fixed translation converts to 00. That initial translation takes place before the remap phase, and I'm not aware of a way to work around this.Palatino wrote: ↑22 Mar 2022, 16:44I changed my order to the beige one before he sent the blue. No binding on mine! In fact, it’s pretty darn nice to type on. Good crunchy feel, nice light weighting. I did swap some springs around, harvesting from the numpad, as a few alphabetical keys were registering without a click, but overall it’s a great board for £20. I can’t stop using it. It’s the keyboard equivalent of cracking my knuckles.Go-Kart wrote: ↑17 Mar 2022, 22:17Well, I actually don't mind the key feel Kinda bindy where you'd expect though. Two of the caps/barrels are pretty dry and they just stay depressed - need lube'n! My favourite thing about this board is the fact that it comes with a floppy disk. I miss floppy discs.Palatino wrote: ↑13 Mar 2022, 16:31Never mind - I just bought one rather than risk they ran out (when I sent through an offer there were 7 competing offers - clearly a lot of interest) £24 is a good price to try a new switch. I passed up the chance to get an Alps Buckling Spring board recently which I half regret, but they are said to be heavier than Model M springs, whereas Syncan are lighter, which suits me better.
PXL_20220317_211156518.jpg
Probably TMK/QMK would be a better solution. But, for now, I've just patched the translation table in Soarer, so now I have all the extra buttons sending codes.Muirium wrote: ↑22 Mar 2022, 21:55Presumably QMK etc. (I have honestly lost count of all these TMK forks) can handle this instead of Soarer.
I like TMK’s mouse keys, for instance. Soarer never got around to those.
He’s still the simplest and best configured by default. But that’s not the whole story, as you see.
Code: Select all
ifset any
ifkeyboard any
ifselect any
remapblock
layer 0
AUX1 PAD_EQUALS
endblock
Code: Select all
:1001B000C20000000000000000F500000000000088
:1001C00000F9E60000E4E80088F600000000000006
:1001D000E3FEEF0075000000E7FD0000FA000000FC
:1001E00065FC00F0ABEB000066FB00F7EA000000E6
:1001F000A9F80000ACEA000000AD0054EC00E900F2
:1002000000F500000000000000000058000000AAF7
:1002100000AE00000000000000004D00504A000049
:10022000AF494C51004F52000000004E00464B4871
Thanks for the suggestion! It seems like I may be the only one with one of these in the keytronic version, so might not be worth it to make a custom pcb. However it seems straightforward to wire the rows/columns directly to capsense controller. It still needs some fresh foam, as the foam seem to have shrunk quite a bit, even though the board is in pristine condition. I might give some protocol-engineering a go before attempting with the capsense controller (and hope that this is not one of those 1-key rollover protocols ).orihalcon wrote: ↑20 Mar 2022, 18:19Haven't converted one myself, but I think you might be able to just wire the capsense matrix to either an Xwhatsit or commonsense controller depending on the layout of the columns/rows. It's times like these that PCB design skills would be priceless as it would be super simple to just replace the PCB - presuming PCB design itself could be aided by something like a scaled scan of the original PCB to place the layout of the capsense pads I would think? A project like that definitely is more doable if a lot of people have the same board that they want to convert so that you can make a batch of them to make the price and time spent each more reasonable as a group buy of sorts. Someone did this with 3277 beamspring PCBs at one time and that went pretty well.
I was hoping to get my hands on one of the ITW versions, but the price inflated to more than I was willing to pay The unit today went for 251 euros. Seems like a nice unit, I hope you manage to get it up and running!
Gorgeous keyboard, the decimal point just needs to be knocked to the leftPolecat wrote: ↑21 Mar 2022, 03:39Another one that looks cool, but isn't:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/334317457012
(Silly price too...)
edit: images added for posterity if not eternity. It's called Microangelo apparently.
I would say that it's the best keyboard I have. And it's not because chyros said it, but it actually is. There is something about its shape, the keycaps and the combination of blue alps that it propels it to the top. Is it worth 700+$?? no, of course not. no keyboard should worth that kind of money. But hey, that's the craziness of the markets, just take a look at how much beamsprings go for. Now THAT is crazy.kelvinhall05 wrote: ↑27 Jan 2022, 01:46chyros said it's good = absurd price (even though it's still mediocre at best)thefarside wrote: ↑27 Jan 2022, 01:30I was watching this auction and was surprised to see the selling price. I know it’s a great blue alps board but I didn’t think it commands such a high price. Is there something I’m missing here?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/RARE-VINTAGE-A ... 3795488681
I don't know what "Huad-Jie Alps clones" are (and am a dedicated Cherry fanboy anyway )
Thanks, I shouldn't be so lazy about posting links. I just checked the wiki and the K104 page has been updated with some info on the Windows version since I found and posted mine originally:
Keytronics foam and foil, see here and scroll up a bit:meanderingthalweg wrote: ↑05 Apr 2022, 15:54Never seen this before… can anyone elaborate on this beauty?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/RARE-VINTAGE-M ... 4317457012