Hey all, sorry for the lack of updates here, progress had been slow but in early January, we got our samples to a place we were happy to move forward with.
The group buy will run from May 1st to June 1st with delivery estimated in December.

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Over the next few months we'll be fixing up renders and the minisite, working on our artisan collabs, continuing to refine the keycaps and doing a full set of samples (this will probably be completed during the group buy itself).

For now, if you'd like to get email updates, do join click the "SLK Updates" button on FK Caps' new site: https://fkcaps.com/keycaps/slk/dessau

very exciting. any news about what the price might look like?

who is the manufacture?

I don't know a whole lot about how joysticks work, but since they're analogue I don't think wiring one up to the arrow keys like that would work anyway, even if it were connected properly to the corresponding rows and columns.

Maybe there was some external button connected to the jack that was wired to the asterisk key? I wonder what the intended purpose was.

The picture of the switch is too dark to make much out, but it looks like it might be a 4 tab clone switch and not actual Alps, which seems to correspond with what the FX designation usually meant.

(Attachment Link)

Ortek used a few different kinds of clones in their similar boards.

I confirm what you supposed, this keyboard indeed has the 4 tab clone switches.

As for the joystick (getting out of topic here), it is branded "Zipstick". These joystick have an Atari joystick connector and they are compatible with Atari 2600. It is interesting because i also got an Atari 2600 at my grand-parents and i'm pretty sure this joystick was intended to be played on it at the time.

Most likely my grand-father cut off the connector to have the joystick soldered on this keyboard later when he got into computers.

Anyway, this joystick is not an analog one, it consists in 6 switches :



I still need to check what is the other connector all about.

Pulled these outta my Mode65 to replace them with SolDarks.  It was in a case for an entire year, and I don't smoke, but life finds a way.

I like this a lot. Great work!