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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: Mental Hobbit on Sat, 29 May 2010, 09:17:33
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Another 1 Euro oddity I couldn't resist:
Compudent is some German company that makes software for dentists.
And then there's a subtle threat: First you, then we. Sounds just as silly in German btw.
I was hoping for some cool old Cherry to harvest keycaps from, and feared a useless old Siemens.
Hm. Never seen open switches before. Never heard of Rafi.
Keycaps are doubleshot, but not compatible to anything I know.
So who created this monster? No clue. No label.
Let's strip her naked then.
It has a beeper! Keeewl.
Let's google for Rafi (http://www.rafi.de/RAFI-GmbH-Co-KG-Eingabesy.1.0.html?&L=1) then.
Turns out they're a German manufaturer of switches, industrial keyboards and all other kinds of stuff.
Looks like they've been around for quite a while. Meet the founder:
(http://www.rafi.de/typo3temp/pics/0cf2cedf2c.jpg)
Apparently they're still making those switches (http://www.rafi.de/RS-76-full-travel-keyswitches.165.0.html?&L=1). They're linear and feel... unspectacular. Similar to Marquardts. Not as good as black Cherries.
The board works fine on a PC. Nice, bright red LEDs.
The special tooth-number keys don't submit single scancodes, but alt- or ctrl-. The board has NKRO. I'll resell it as a l33t special for gamers. :biggrin1:
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The board has NKRO. I'll resell it as a l33t special for gamers. :biggrin1:
This one is just aching to be matched against a Logitech G19 (http://geekhack.org/showthread.php?t=10075&page=7) in a one on one deathmatch game.
So what do the switches feel and sound like?
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Sexy.
I :love: M. Hobbit!
Awesome pics. I ran out of that's hot pictures :(
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That is a great looking keyboard. I love those keycaps!
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This one is just aching to be matched against a Logitech G19 (http://geekhack.org/showthread.php?t=10075&page=7) in a one on one deathmatch game.
No doubt. And you wouldn't even have to press both shift keys, just throwing it at the G19 would be sufficient. It's as heavy as a Model M and has a steel bottom plate. -> :rip: G19
So what do the switches feel and sound like?
Linear, about the same weight as black Cherries. They must be dampened, no noise when bottoming out. It must be 15-20 years old, so it's no surprise that some switches are a bit scratchy. Should be easy to fix though. All I've done so far is blowing the dust off the surface.
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The only problem with this board is that it's going to be very noisy. I don't mean the keyswitch noise. I mean that every 100 keystrokes or so I'll have an unstoppable urge to jump out of my chair and yell "BINGO!"
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Cough...
Looking at my own photos again, I started wondering what that beautifully illuminated "Klick" key might do. For those not fluent in German: Klick can be loosely translated to click. No, it doesn't activate a keyclick. It activates a keybeep. (So the accurate labelling would be Piep, not Klick. Sloppy German engineers!) Sounds really cool actually.
So what I mistook for a coil must be a beeper. The potentiometer next to it is probably for the volume - I'm too lazy right now to open it up again and verify that though.
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I also find the way you Germans count Blue numbers rather odd.
It's not our fault that our teeth grow in that strange order. Blame Darwin. Or god. Or some other foreigner.