I have a Kinesis Advantage I got secondhand for extremely cheap because it had some damaged stems and missing caps, and I'm going to town on it. This thread is where I'm going to
pad my post count post pics and explanations of my efforts, and hopefully foster discussion of this cool keyboard and various stuff we can do to it.
PHASE ONE: GaterizingI started with swapping out the keyswitches because I HATE MX Browns. I got a big ol' bag of Gateron Blues and ordered spare keywell parts direct from Kinesis so I could leave the original ones alone. I left the original thumb clusters in place and popped off the tops and swapped out the guts and top halves for the Gaterons, and then decided to also swap the springs for 80 g ones to create a "Ghettoron Green" switch for mah thumbs. I also removed the switches in the left thumb cluster for the HOME and END keys, and replaced them with MX Lock switches for use in toggling layers in the functional layout I use.
Making new keywells involved first soldering down 1N4148 diodes for every switch. You can add them to the insides of the switches and solder later all in one go, but this is much faster and leaves the diodes exposed in case you need replace one later and don't want to rip apart the whole assembly.
Snapped the switches into the frame and glued down. Most people use hotglue, I used E6000 because hotglue is for kindergarten. Ain't nobody getting these switches out now.
Soldered down the switches and reassembled, only to find all the keys in the palms were dead but both thumbs worked fine. I pulled everything apart again, and checked the orientation of the original keywell boards relative to the ZIF connectors on the controller board, and realized I'd put the ribbon cables in backwards. On the controller board. The cables (which have one-sided contacts) need a half-turn to make contact on both ends, which was not a "feature" of the original design and seems to be a hardware iteration made in the last decade-and-change.
After turning the ribbon and testing, I found a new set of very interesting symptoms: most keys were still dead, but the bottom row on the left hand would output the keystrokes of the TOP row of the RIGHT hand, in reverse order. How weird is that? Turns out, Kinesis swapped the orientation of the ZIF connectors on the controller board, so I have the cables/PCBs for the new iteration but the board/connectors for the old. Turning the cable to make contact solves one problem, but reverses the order of the pins causing "unique" issues. To fix, I trimmed back the insulation and folded the end of the ribbon cable over on itself, reversing which side the contacts are on while retaining the pin order. Tested, functions - reassembled and everything is good, all switches/solder joints work without issues! Phase One complete.
Lock switches! WHEEEEEEEEEE
PHASE TWO: Internal USB HUBTwo USB ports isn't enough for the things I have planned, so I am going to tuck a small bus-powered hub inside the casing and run future mods off of that. Fortunately, this thing is mostly empty space so it's very accepting of such nonsense.
Trying to keep soldering to a minimum, I unglued and rotated the little board in the base so the two USB ports are now internal, enabling me to just use short/thin cables inside the case. I believe these are only USB 1.1 ports however, so I may end up having to figure out where to tap the board for USB 2 upstream of these and connect the hub there, and just cut these out of the equation altogether. I don't have the hub yet, so that experiment will come later. From what I can tell though, the RFID/NFC readers, CP24 and SpaceNavigator all work fine over 1.1 so I'm hopeful I can take the easy way out here.
Rotating the board this way also allows some nice cable-tucking to save space inside and make room for future additions:
This is what the exterior looks like right now, followed by a mockup of where things are going to end up.
After receiving my adorable little USB squid, I hooked up my peripherals and tested - turns out everything works fine via one of the existing 1.1 ports, so that makes my life much simpler. Removed unnecessary enclosure bits and secured everything in place with more E6000. Sadly, the squid's cables don't quit reach to the limits of the keyboard housing, so the RFID readers won't end up quite in the position I had planned. Settled on a spot for the USB squidboard and glued it down. That's all for today while I let the glue set overnight.
Phase Three: Internal RFID/NFC readersAn interesting note, the low-frequency 125 kHz reader has a coil antenna, while the high-frequency 13.56 MHz reader uses an antenna within the PCB. I tacked down the LF antenna with a drop of glue while the USB board was also curing.
Phase Four: SpaceNavigator between thumb clusters
Phase Five: Mini Touchpad near right thumb?
Phase Six: Programmable keypad between keywells
