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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: OhItsThtGuy on Wed, 14 April 2021, 11:25:15

Title: Looking for TKL Kit
Post by: OhItsThtGuy on Wed, 14 April 2021, 11:25:15

Hi everyone,

New to posting on geekhack but have been lurking in the mk community for about a year now with a couple builds under my belt.

I have a friend who wants to commission a TKL board from me but has a relatively small budget (probably $200-300). I've been trying to scope out a group buy for him but any TKLs I've seen have been over budget. Are there any in-stock TKL kits anywhere that don't break the bank too much? And if not, a higher quality prebuilt for modding could also work (as a last resort).

Thanks!

Title: Re: Looking for TKL Kit
Post by: Maledicted on Wed, 14 April 2021, 14:14:07

Hi OhItsThtGuy. Welcome to Geekhack.

I think that both the terms "build" and "quality" are up for interpretation. What sort of features do you want? Anything TKL is not a common niche for people who want something DIY. My favorite all time OEM TKL is the Corsair K65, and people seem to love hating on that whole family of boards, so I'll leave OEM boards out of it.

Since the Heavy Metal Keyboards GB is over with (being the only one I have noticed that tempted me enough to pull the proverbial trigger), there are things like the XD87 (https://kprepublic.com/search?type=product&q=xd87), which has always been pretty cheap. It looks like somebody ported QMK (https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware/tree/master/keyboards/xd87) to it, if that's important.

What sort of features are desirable?

Title: Re: Looking for TKL Kit
Post by: FullCryoPsychochomp on Thu, 22 April 2021, 12:15:00

Here are some boards that I've found while browsing.

https://www.idobao.net/products/idobao-id87-v2-tkl-pcb-mounted-hot-swappable-mechanical-keyboard-kit

https://switchcouture.com/products/electrotype-87?pr_prod_strat=copurchase&pr_rec_pid=6199208476839&pr_ref_pid=6199189602471&pr_seq=uniform

https://www.idobao.net/products/idobao-id80v2-75-hot-swappable-mechanical-keyboard-kit-ansi-or-iso-%E7%9A%84%E5%89%AF%E6%9C%AC?variant=34330144440451

https://kbdfans.com/collections/diy-kit/products/kbd75v2-custom-keyboard-diy-kit

2 of these are 75% and not 80%, but I hope they still work.

Title: Re: Looking for TKL Kit
Post by: BarfightSpectator on Thu, 22 April 2021, 12:38:10

there's also the eclipse, currently in ic. that one is tkl without f row