Compact/condensed layout boards aren't exactly my thing, but a listing for a bunch of these caught my eye while browsing Ebay. For only 18 bucks and no shipping, it was a steal.
It's a 90-key board from DSI (model name DS-90), and when I first found the listing there was almost nothing about it online aside from info on the manufacturers site and a couple places they sold it.
Most interestingly, the listing claimed it was mechanical and used Cherry MX 600 grit sandpaper- I mean reds. Lo and behold...
They're plate mount too, which means a nice metal plate holding things together. The board is pretty well built for what it is. It's not a Northgate "shatter your feet, ye who do not hold me carefully" tank like a lot of nice vintage boards, but its reasonably heavy for a smaller board and it doesn't flex much.
It also has three USB ports built in - one on either side and one on the back.
You may also notice the NumLock LED, the numpad sublegends, and the NumLock key sitting at the top-right of the board in previous photos. You'd be entirely sensible for thinking that toggling NumLock on and off would also toggle the embedded numpad on and off.
You'd also be wrong.
No, the embedded numpad is only accessed via the FN key. The NumLock is not vestigial however, as turning it off and using the FN key to access the embedded numpad will cause it to behave like the embedded nav cluster that is found in most numpads (for which there are no keycap legends).
What we have here is a keyboard with a numpad embedded into its alpha block, and a nav cluster embedded into its embedded numpad.
Of course, I don't really use boards like this, so for all I know this could be standard practice. If it is, then I can only conclude that the people who like it are bizarro people from Planet X.
This keyboard comes with a hecking power cable.
Alongside the USB plug is a plug for the hecking power cable. According to the spec sheet/informational paper/whatever that came with it, this is to supply 500mA of power to the USB sockets on the keyboard. I guess this is to charge phones faster or something (I don't know much about how much power you need to charge phones etc).
And now, a moment of silence for all the wrists that died so that Apple could make their keyboards look pretty in photographs.
No flip out feet - fair enough. The keyboard sits at a good angle as-is, and has nice, rubber feet to keep it in place. The best part about these feet is that they're not concealing screws.
...not that something this basic should be considered praiseworthy, but such is the world we live in.
The Windows logo is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
Here's that spec sheet thing I was talking about that came with the board. There are a lot of interesting tidbits on here.
For instance, it claims to have NKRO, which wasn't even mentioned in the Ebay listing. According to some cursory testing, this seems to be true (up to the 6-key limit most USB boards have).
Also the bottom-right mentions this is a version from 2015. I don't know if that's a manufacture date, or just the particular revision of this board. It may very well be newer than that, as it came to me looking (and even smelling) brand-spanking-new.
I've yet to take the thing apart, but I plan on at least swapping the switches out for ones that don't feel like they spent a day at the beach and were too lazy to shower. I've seen some 84-key cap sets that would fit it, so perhaps I'll grab one of them as well (though I don't know what I'd do about the media keys off to the left).
If any of you are interested in picking one of these up, they're still for sale at the same Ebay listing I got mine from.
Eighteen dollars will get you everything I got here and a box to put it all in - a pretty good deal if you ask me.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/DSI-90-Key-USB ... 2683086588
