geekhack
geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: vipjun on Sat, 13 April 2013, 12:08:45
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Was wondering if anyone knew of Cherry pcb mount keyboards that allow you to pop switches out without soldering.
So far i'm under the impression that the following are PCB mounts
Most / all Cherry corp keyboards G80-XXXX.
KBT poker
KBT pure
Are there any else ?
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Update -
Anything with LED's are likely a no since the led's are soldered.
Maybes
Keycool 87
Plum 87
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As a PCB mount lover I keep a look out for them, sadly there are not a whole lot of them.
Cherry G80 series are generally PCB mount except for a few models. There are also many rebranded Cherry like Peacock, Schneider, Nixdorf, Highscreen, Scitex, Olivetti, Commodore, Amiga, Compaq, APC, etc, though usually there are only certain times where they had some G80 as a high end option so most of them are not.
Vortex Poker, Pure, Race.
Plum 96 and Neo Zelia.
WEY EK and HK series, though they are not useable without the hard to find proprietary KVM box that is required.
Alcatel MMK, some of which have a proprietary connection and protocol to be used with their thin terminals.
GH60 can be if you build it as such.
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So I accept that this might be an obvious question, but I take it from this post, that most boards then must feature plate mounted switches? For whatever reason, I had interpreted my previous reading that a plate mounted keyboard was a less common occurence.
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plate mounted switches are the most common as Ivan mentioned.
Damn Ivan has the full list.
one thing to note is that the new Pure Pro and new Poker 2 are going to have a plate mounted option and most of vendors buying up the the new Pure (like mass drop) and Poker 2 are gathering up the plate mounted option so I imagine a PCB mounted Poker 2 and Pure Pro might be hard to get but that is just my prediction.
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Thanks for the information Ivan.
Yes for some reason companies other than cherry almost always use plate mount.
Glod: that's probably a good guess. But also I wonder if PCB mounted on a Plate would be the go to now as a best of both worlds: considering there have been "The beast plate" for the poker that allows soderless switches on top of a custom plate.
Ivan: since you probably have experience with the 2. Are there a difference in feel between pcb and plate mount ? my guess is PCB mount has a slightly different bottom out feel but it shouldn't have an effect on anything else.
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I feel that PCB mount allows the switch personality to be more apparent. They feel more natural to me and a softer typing experience. Plate seem to make everything feel more lifeless and dead to me and seem to be noisier. I am not a fan of plates. I don't really see any benefit or purpose to them besides making the keyboard heavier, which is useless in itself as a feature as far as I am concerned. Oh, and some plates do look kind of cool when they are a bright color or something peeking between the keycaps, but then so can PCB if they bother make it an interesting color.
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I feel that PCB mount allows the switch personality to be more apparent. They feel more natural to me and a softer typing experience. Plate seem to make everything feel more lifeless and dead to me and seem to be noisier. I am not a fan of plates. I don't really see any benefit or purpose to them besides making the keyboard heavier, which is useless in itself as a feature as far as I am concerned. Oh, and some plates do look kind of cool when they are a bright color or something peeking between the keycaps, but then so can PCB if they bother make it an interesting color.
Different strokes for different folks. I love plate mount board, they feel way more solid to me than a PCB mount board. The single best mod I did to my poker was converting from PCB mount to plate mount.