Hello everyone,
I'm new here and relatively new to the mechanical keyboard community. Fell in love with my VA87m in the cherry blue config and now my wallet is crying because I want a new keyboard lol.
Anyways, I was at Savers (thrift store) and came across a kinesis evolution with white Alps SKCM switches. I bought it for 13 dollars and when I came home to clean it, it appeared to have never been used. The keycaps weren't worn out, and there was no debris or dust in the plate.
Seeing the potential I have been looking around for some parts to throw together a keyboard. However, I haven't had any luck with finding available, affordable parts.
At the moment I don't have a soldering iron so I need to get that, but for now the things I do have are switches, and keycaps. I just need compatible parts but as I said it seems that Cherry compatible parts are much more popular.
I want to build a TKL keyboard that is relatively affordable, I don't really want to spend more than $100-$150 for parts. If that budget is unrealistic, I'm willing to pay a bit more or just accumulate parts over time.
So where do I go to look? What parts do I buy?