Mechanical keyboard appreciation thread

[Davros]

Not only that messes up WASD

I actually use WSQE it's not a problem 99% of the time but there are a few games that dont let me rebind the keys
or games that have options to rebind the keys but those options don't actually work like Halo 2
so being able to swap Q for A and E for D at the hardware level is a godsend.
I have a profile called QA-ED Swapped for those games

ps: keyboard ghosting demonstration
https://www.microsoft.com/appliedsciences/content/projects/KeyboardGhostingDemo.aspx
my keyboard maxes out at 6 simultaneous key presses.

since the layout is not really great for gaming.

So it's totally useless then
ps: they are still on sale
pps: have you seen these from microsoft
Sculpt and Natural Keyboard

 

[hoom]

Yeah my dad had one of those 'natural' ones, it was absolutely horrific.

Now I dream of Maltron

 

[Malo]

I have 3 MS Natural 4000 keyboards on my personal and work PC's. I hate coding or gaming without them. My wife and daughter love them as well. Can't do without them ever again, they're so comfortable!

 

[Gubbi]

Up until last year I used IBM PS/2 Model M keyboards at home and at work. The one at work was over 25 years old when it finally succumbed

I replaced both Model M's with Cooler Master QuickFire Ultimate after reading a review of it on Techreport.

It's a love/hate relationship; Love the build quality and excellent tactile feedback, absolutely hate the firmware in these keyboards. First of all they are slow to boot, so slow in fact that I could not enter BIOS or activate my Boot selection menu when I start my PC at home. I had to enable slow boot (using a different keyboard), complete with RAM test, to give the Quickfire Ultimate enough time to boot. The USB implementation also leaves a lot to be desired. Under Linux it will randomly hang about once a day (at work), the only solution is to power cycle it (replug)

Next time I'll just go with a plain Cherry keyboard.

Cheers

 

[Chris Lux]

You probably want MX Red or Black switches (from the Cherry MX range at least). I'm not that familiar with other switch types if I'm honest. Maybe nutball has an idea.

Please no!... Red and Black are linear and you cannot feel the actuation. Take a look at Browns or Clears for that matter. I love my Clears but I'm also playing with the thought of modifying them to Ergo-Clears (Clear stem with springs from Browns).

 

[Davros]

The one at work was over 25 years old when it finally succumbed

I dont believe you, Model M's are the hardest substance known to man

I also have these:
Saitek Eclipse

WolfPad

And a couple of wireless keypads
These are awesome I can stick one to the centre of my steering wheel and it gives me extra buttons

And also one of these:

Why??? Well if Im going to fix a laptop and I suspect it could have a faulty keyboard this is very easy to carry I just roll it up and stick it in my pocket.

 

[Gubbi]

I dont believe you, Model M's are the hardest substance known to man

The keyboards actually worked fine, but PS/2 connector on the one at work finally broke after a decade of wobbliness. That and the highly unsanitary condition of both keyboards caused me to replace them.

Cheers

 

[Davros]

They can be cleaned. I dismantled mine on occasion.
ps:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/maplin-mi...4e?cmpid=ppc&gclid=CJL9zKei0M0CFe4y0wodGq8PbA

 

[psurge]

For people that want a portable keyboard, the text blade (https://waytools.com) looks really interesting. Fair warning though - I've had one on preorder for a year. They have finally gotten around to beta testing so the product appears to be real, but it might still be a while before the thing is actually available. I'll report back if I ever get one and it doesn't suck...

 

[Davros]

Thats just about the worst sales pitch I've ever heard

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Up until last year I used IBM PS/2 Model M keyboards at home and at work. The one at work was over 25 years old when it finally succumbed

I replaced both Model M's with Cooler Master QuickFire Ultimate after reading a review of it on Techreport.

It's a love/hate relationship; Love the build quality and excellent tactile feedback, absolutely hate the firmware in these keyboards. First of all they are slow to boot, so slow in fact that I could not enter BIOS or activate my Boot selection menu when I start my PC at home. I had to enable slow boot (using a different keyboard), complete with RAM test, to give the Quickfire Ultimate enough time to boot. The USB implementation also leaves a lot to be desired. Under Linux it will randomly hang about once a day (at work), the only solution is to power cycle it (replug)

Next time I'll just go with a plain Cherry keyboard.

Cheers

Yes, that is the one thing about my QuickFire Pro that I dislike heavily. Up until recently I've had to use an old rubber dome keyboard if I needed to enter the BIOS. I dislike slowboot so the lesser evil was to keep another keyboard nearby.

Regards,
SB

 

[Gubbi]

They can be cleaned. I dismantled mine on occasion.

I wouldn't eat off of it, but I didn't think it was gross. My wife wouldn't go near it, though.

Cheers

 

[psurge]

Thats just about the worst sales pitch I've ever heard

Yeah . I'm hanging in there basically because I want to believe - they are trying out some very cool sounding ideas. For one thing, key spacing is full-size in the horizontal direction, but the usual rows of caps are collapsed into a single row of touch sensitive caps. This drastically reduces vertical finger motion and makes for a smaller keyboard. You can also pair it with multiple computers simultaneously, and switch which computer you are sending input to with a few key-presses.

 

[cjo]

Mechanical keyboards are great! I've had a Das Keyboard with Brown keys for a while now at home, and I love it. Tempted to get one for work, but the noise would probably annoy others in an open-plan office.

Also, @Rys, is your keyboard not a bit bright first thing in the morning?

 

[Rys]

I don't actually look at it while typing, so it's fine! In other mech news, I recently got the 1976 keycap set for my Pok3r:

 

[nutball]

Awww yyeeaahh! Cool beans bro.

I've gone right down the rabbit-hole. Bought a Clueboard PCB, am about to solder my own keyboard

 

[nutball]

So I'm prototyping a case to house my new build. I've had it laser cut in bog standard cardboard, just to make sure everything lines and up that I know WTF I'm doing (turns out that I didn't know WTF I was doing, so that was a few quid well spent).

Current plan is to have the switch plate and bottom plate cut from stainless steel, with acrylic spacer sandwich (probably white), and the top layer from clear acrylic. I'd like to add lots of sound/vibration insulation, perhaps a layer of laser-cut felt between the switch plate and PCB and a layer of sorbothane between the PCB and bottom plate. My hope is that this damping combined with the steel switch and bottom plates will make the thing quite solid. We will see if that turns out.

Switches are Gateron whites (35g linear), still vacillating whether to buy Granite DSA now that SP have them available again, with ISO this time.

I would like to get rid of the binding screw things for a cleaner look. Trying to figure out whether I can hide them by gluing them to the back of the SS switch plate with epoxy or similar.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

So I'm prototyping a case to house my new build. I've had it laser cut in bog standard cardboard, just to make sure everything lines and up that I know WTF I'm doing (turns out that I didn't know WTF I was doing, so that was a few quid well spent).

Current plan is to have the switch plate and bottom plate cut from stainless steel, with acrylic spacer sandwich (probably white), and the top layer from clear acrylic. I'd like to add lots of sound/vibration insulation, perhaps a layer of laser-cut felt between the switch plate and PCB and a layer of sorbothane between the PCB and bottom plate. My hope is that this damping combined with the steel switch and bottom plates will make the thing quite solid. We will see if that turns out.

Switches are Gateron whites (35g linear), still vacillating whether to buy Granite DSA now that SP have them available again, with ISO this time.

I would like to get rid of the binding screw things for a cleaner look. Trying to figure out whether I can hide them by gluing them to the back of the SS switch plate with epoxy or similar.

Big thumbs up on making your own keyboard. Thumbs down on trying to reduce the noise. Then again, I like the audio feedback of a mechanical click to go along with the tactile feedback when you press a key with your finger.

Can't wait to see more updates as well as the finished product.

Regards,
SB

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

Just chiming in to say I love the Corsair Strafe that I just got a few weeks back. It is so much better to type on than the crappy Gateway and Dell keyboards I've been using for the past couple of decades.

It almost makes typing up reports.... fun. The satisfying response pressure and the pleasant little clicks (Brown keys), make it almost like you get rewarded for each sentence you type.

 

[Davros]

Nuball pay attention to cleaning with your build