Alright so I got mine all built and I'm really impressed with how well it works out of the box. The trackpoint is stupid good and just works, it's precise and barely needed any fidgeting on my end. The build itself was pretty easy, and it came partially assembled. I kinda messed up by not unscrewing the pcb from the plate to see what was going on before I soldered everything, so sorry about that. Onto my crummy build-ish guide, tho the one on TEX's site is generally good enough and the board was honestly one of the easiest I've done so far in the hobby, it's really straightforward.
I got the DIY kit without switches since I was gonna go with Ergo Clears, which I lubed with 205g0 and filmed. The box came with all the hardware, four cherry lowpro switches for the mouse keys along with some o-rings, two trackpoint nubs, all the caps needed, and a usb-c cable which I seem to never have enough of.
You get a sticker for the back of it, I believe there for four different ones? idk, was pretty cool so I slapped that on. The board itself has the stabilizers already attached to the plate, which aren't honestly the best. I lubed them up real good and used some paper to hold them into the plate tighter. I'm a little bummed it's going to be difficult to find better ones for the spacebar, but you do what you can with these and they'll be passable.
Here's the back of the pcb. You'll have to unscrew the three screws too loose the trackpoint in order to get the switches in there, and the little jigger connecting the trackpoint to the pcb comes off like
so just by pulling the tab up, doing this allows you to solder everything in without it getting in the way. I was never worried about it breaking whenever I moved it around a bunch so that was nice. I used plate mount cherry clears, and I would go as far as to recommend using pcb mount. The switches jiggled around in the plate a little bit, but nothing that couldn't be fixed during soldering. Using pcb mount switches would just make them more snug before solder.
Here's everything put in it. Using a tealios with cherry top for the spacebar. The three cherry lowpros for the mouse buttons are... okay. I really kinda wish they went with kailh choc, but I assume it would be difficult to mold keycaps for them. I'm not a huge fan of only being able to use linear for them, so maybe cherry will make a clicky variant someday. After soldering it all together, you screw down the plate+pcb into the back plastic piece, then screw the top plastic piece into the bottom. This used 14 screws which I think is way overkill, especially considering the plate and pcb are screwed together, but it is really solid. Knock on the side and there is no hollow sound whatsoever.
Here it is all done. Got the little IBM badge off ebay. Been typing and doing a bit of work on it for a few hours and it just works so well. I can't stress how phenomenal this trackpoint is. It works just like how it should, holding down the middle key and using the trackpoint scrolls and the whole shebang, right out of the box. I haven't had to mess with the dipswitches at all yet except to switch around some of the bottom row keys, there are a few options to make the middle mouse key act as FN but I don't really want/need it. TEX even has a little online keymapping editor that was super simple to do, no need to flash, just flip a switch and throw the .txt into it.
The board is decently heavy thanks to the steel plate, comes to a little over 2 pounds. I really super like how the keycaps are. I haven't used tex ada before, but I'm already liking them more than dsa. It's pretty killer how these come with the DIY kit. I think I'll consider getting blanks in the future since these will eventually wear down from being laser etched.
Here's a little sound test. and
here's a little fun knock test. The feeling of the board is fine. I've been to meetups so I kinda knew how this would feel going into it, which is why I chose some tactiles, the steel plate would have made linears a little too stiff tho those are what I usually go for. The little rising feet on the back are a bit crummy, they just kinda snap into place and wobble around so I end up not using them (that and they make the keyboard way too high for me.) I'm gonna try throwing some foam/shelf liner inside to see if it'll help sound at all in the future. Overall I really like it. This thing would be a workhouse for a server rack especially considering it has a bluetooth module as well, but I have enough fun using it at home!
Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions or want me to fidget around with it, let me know!
