A proposal for a new SSK

[Muirium]

The moment you please 7bit is the moment you know you are lost…

But I do like his Round 5 treatment. MX compatible caps, please! What could possibly go wrong?

[M'er Forever]

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[M'er Forever]

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[Muirium]

With a programmable controller, you can really just do whatever the hell you want. My little 60% has all the space I can figure out what to do with, using mods alongside the Function layer keys. (We could use a different name for keys like F1 and F24 than the key we press to access the function layer. Their similarity in name gets awkward when talking about both of them!) I'd like to fill up the immense landscape of keys on my 122 key terminal Model M, but I wind up just repeating things I'm already used to in the 60% island.

By the way: a 60% is smaller in two dimensions than a 60%+function row layout. The curved backplane adds a lot of height to the back of a Model M, in fact here's my SSK versus a Ducky MX TKL (which happens to be yellow):


A 60% Model M would be substantially more compact. Like the Model F based Kishsaver.

Goddamn crummy winter light. I really need to shoot some good comparison pictures.

To understand compact keyboards, I really suggest trying one. You'd be surprised at how the less is more equation actually works in practice.

[M'er Forever]

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[M'er Forever]

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[M'er Forever]

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[Muirium]

Wow, these are just fabulous! I'll have a non-stepped caps lock, no logo model please!

What you've done with the bottom row — four mods (in 5 units) space bar (5 units) and four symmetric mods again (for 5 more units) — is magnificent. A highly customisable, perfectly symmetric layout.

[M'er Forever]

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[Muirium]

Cheers, Emmer. A lot of us want this to become real, too.

Hopefully Unicomp gets the hint that 60%s are popular right now, as Filco is going all out with the Minila: introduced in 2013 and yet was their first model to go Bluetooth just a few months later!

The WASD cluster is simply a gaming convention. They are perfectly ordinary keys. Their significance is that they act as a cursor cluster for the left hand (to move your character's feet) while your right hand is on the mouse (to move your character's head). I believe programming legend John Carmack was the one who arbitrarily chose WASD when he invented this convention with the first modern first-person-shooter: Quake. His mistake. ESDF is much better, as you stay homed on the F key and you have more keys to the left available for extended actions.

[M'er Forever]

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[Muirium]

Double shots are thick. Especially tall sphericals like on my custom. SP has the tooling to make double shots of several different profiles (SA, DSA, DCS…) with MX stems, but apparently even the similar Alps stem requires retooling, new molds, and great expense for SP and whoever commissions it. Certainly, there's demand here for Alps group buys but no sign of it coming to fruition.

IBM caps are more different again. As you know, they come in single-piece and two-piece varieties. The outer shell of two-piece IBM caps is too thin to be made via double shot; with insufficient clearance between the keys to allow it to be made bigger. Single-piece caps have more of a fighting chance of being done in double shot because there's much more volume to play with. But beware the caveats for price above. Does anyone have an active patent on their design?

My custom keyboard has a set of 7bit's Round 4 SPH group buy SA profile double shots on it. I'm getting more colour schemes from Round 5 too. They're not individually commissioned by me, but I have successfully talked him into a few things! A group buy really helps because together we have a lot of power to steer SP. 7bit has added to their repertoire with new molds, for instance, which will help complete my Round 4 set now that the Shift and Return keys are available in the right size.

[M'er Forever]

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[Muirium]

Hmm… those dimensions could be critical. The curved backplane makes for an interesting puzzle in trying to work the tolerances out. I'd consider designing a single-piece double shot cap first, or perhaps a two-piece with a smaller inner head. Remember that altering key size and spacing is sure to show up in feel and navigation, as muscle memory knows otherwise!

All the fancy double shots I have (and know how to get) are ABS. The evil yellowing plastic! PBT is better from a colour retention point of view, but has issues when cooling which lead to trouble when making double shots and also banana shaped space bars! Progress is being made, apparently, with PBT double shots an occasional news story from China, and I even have a couple of (almost straight) PBT space bars myself. But our friends at SP are an ABS only shop when it comes to double shots. Probably wisely so, for the foreseeable.

Fortunately, dye sub PBT and double shot ABS are quite complementary. Light keys: dye sub PBT for anti-yellowing and high contrast dark legends. Dark keys: double shot ABS for high contrast bright legends, which don't show yellowing nearly as badly.

[Dubsgalore]

Nice Renders! I'd go with no-logo and stepped caps lock

The backspace in place of the traditional \| as Muirium is not really my cup of tea, but I know a lot of others like that.

I personally think even having the function row would take up a lot more space, and like Muirium said as well, the case design would be a bit higher and take up more space.

I personally prefer ABS, but I know a lot of people really like pbt. I think a combo set would be kinda cool to see. It would be pretty long-lasting as well, I know my friend was planning on doing that with two original cherry sets. Like you said M'er Forever, finding the one keyboard that everyone will be 100% happy with won't happen, so some decisions will need to be made in order to find a good balance of what people want and need. A ton of things are preference, so it'll just be incredibly difficult to find something that everyone will like.

Of course, if this became a reality and boards were actually produced, i'd bet you that nearly everyone would drop all their preferences and buy one. a 60% BS board would be insanely popular, no matter the layout.

[Muirium]

One of the best things about buckling spring is that one barrel plate can support several layouts. Everyone who's ever put ANSI caps on an ISO Model M (or vice versa) knows how easy that is compared to moving switches around on a Cherry keyboard.

My Kishsaver has a standard 2 unit backspace on row 1, but underneath the cap are two barrels. I think I could put on two 1 unit caps and gain an extra key! Well, with the right controller. The hooks are even in place on that little 60% for the vertical stabs for ISO Return.

Here's to keeping the old IBM magic alive for variable layouts! One barrel plate to rule them all.

[M'er Forever]

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[M'er Forever]

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[Muirium]

Cool!

I might have a look inside my Kishsaver's inner workings as apparently it doesn't have bolts (plastic rivets or otherwise), anyway, but seems to slide together using hooks on the side. One spring is a bit bent and I'd like to replace it, plus go exploring. I expect the pads are there but can't quite tell from above as the materials are dark.

Gamers are a funny bunch, by the way. Those of them into quality keyboards at all tend to like linear switches for their clean travel without hysteresis. Apparently pure repeat trigger speed is considered vital. They don't like MX blues much at all, as the click mechanism gets in the way of the switch resetting, ready for another frantic hit.

The one gamer I've ever popped a Model M in front of didn't like it. But he's a flight sim guy and I've no idea what he's on about…

[bhtooefr]

I find that buckling spring is better for gaming than an equivalent rollover MX blue board, for what it's worth. The MX blue click mechanism is just weird when held at the edge of actuation, whereas buckling spring is reliable and predictable. Both have buckets of hysteresis, of course, but blues just act weird when you try to hold them at their edges.

But, I'm hardly a gamer.

[Dubsgalore]

Thanks, Dubsgalore. I agree that a 60% B/S board would be quite popular -- especially if it had either 6KRO or NKRO, which would attract a substantial number of gamers. If it were also offered with the type of backlit keys I proposed in an earlier post in this thread, it would be a real knockout product for gamers. What would be especially cool would be using RGB OLED panels under the keys (assuming either double-shot molding is found to be feasible for IBM-style keys, or clear caps were used -- easy to do) and then having the key legends/graphics dynamically changeable to coordinate with the game being played.

I was going to say, I couldn't care less about full backlit boards, but some leds here and there really make the board pop in my opinion. Of course, gamers love full lit boards, so if you could 100% LEDs into the board, that would make people happy. Especially gamers.

Again, nice work!

[M'er Forever]

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[Muirium]

It's definitely Model F:

http://deskthority.net/post141015.html#p141015
Not mine, but everything I've seen looks identical. And yes I've crumbly foam, that's what put me off going straight inside.

This is what it sounds like:

King of Ping.

[002]

Just a heads-up for those who have kisksavers but not taken them apart yet. There are two plastic separators either side of the board between the screw mounts on the case and the main switchplate. Be prepared to have the ends of these disintegrate when you try and pick them up
This happened on both of my boards and although they held up enough to be re-used, I think I'll be limiting the amount of times I take mine apart. Replacing it with a more permanent solution would probably be pretty easy, but I know some of you would prefer to keep the boards as original as possible.

[Muirium]

Hmm. I've been inside two, as well, and didn't notice. I did spot two missing screws in mine, though, which needed adjusting in the first, which had dodgy alignment and sticking keys until I fixed it.

I suspect they've been disassembled before.

[Spearman]

What does the menu key do?

[M'er Forever]

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[M'er Forever]

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[M'er Forever]

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[Spearman]

Just tested it out on linux mint 15 and it brings up the right-click context menu there as well. Never really used it, but I'll keep it in mind as I'm working on using the mouse less and less. Web browsing can be especially annoying with many major websites having their own keyboard bindings which can interfere with the plugins I'm using.