geekhack
geekhack Projects => Making Stuff Together! => DIY Discussions ARCHIVE => Topic started by: hospadar on Wed, 27 October 2010, 10:04:45
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In short: I want to remove the numpad from a scorpius M10 to make a space-saver style board. But as I don't currently own a scorpius, I was hoping someone could either: take some photos of the pcb inside, or just remember from memory if there are any critical electronics that would interfere with such a mod. I'm also interested in potentially chopping up an adesso 135 key if the m10 doesn't work out.
For reference: This is exactly what I want to do (http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title=Island:9542), but to a scorpius M10.
I'm building a portable machine: 20" 1600x1200 monitor, mini-itx mobo, small-size PSU, built into custom low-profile case, with monitor in a folding situation on top. It will probably somewhat resemble a laptop, but enormous. It's more along the lines of a convenient lan-party setup where everything is all in one box with no loose cables and one easy handle.
Anywho - since it's basically full-size, I'd like to put a nice full-size-key mechanical keyboard in it, but a keyboard with numpad and everything will be too big. The keyboard needs to fit in an approximately 12"-14" space.
The ideal keyboard would be a filco tenkeyless in size -something like an smk85 would be fine too. Problem is, tenkeyless is too pricey for me, and other options are too hard to find (IBM space savers, etc), I want something clicky.
So my thought is to mod a full length keyboard to chop off the numpad - Ideally the scorpius m10 since it seems to be the cheapest board with a full-size standard layout navigation area and nice clicky blue switches. My question is: has anyone seen the internals of the scorpius? are there any critical electronics which would get in the way of such a mod? can anyone share a picture of the pcb inside a scorpius?
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To get a tenkeyless Scorpius M10, you'd cut along the centerline of the three holes in the board between the red blocks.
(http://geekhack.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=13532&stc=1&d=1289974608)
I have no idea what is the two-lead item on the right, nor do I know what is the six-lead item on the left. The metal plate blocks my view of the component side of these locations. However the steel plate offers a proper guidance to the cut. There's a hole in the plate and the edge of the PCB cutout is probably appropriate to extend through the plate.
(http://geekhack.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=13533&stc=1&d=1289975036)
The USB connection is entirely offside, unthreatened by the cut. Done right, you might have a USB numpad in addition to your mini.
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This does not look easy.
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The problem with these cut-offs without new controllers is they don't have a ghosted numpad, or I would have tried it on a lot of mine like the Monterey board I have. You also still have to deal with tracing the matrix and fixing the case which is a pain in the but.
I took a number of pictures of my scorpius that I ripped the blue cherries out of to make my scratch build, you could probably look through any posts and cross index it with my name if you need more.
I think you'd be better off stripping the blue cherries out of it then trying to help me with my keyboard. Still looking for an economical way to punch square holes in a plate/aluminum. Currently stuck on that, but everything else is pretty much done.