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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: miroslav on Mon, 26 October 2015, 10:04:27

Title: Reprogramming Logic Board Controller on Keyboards
Post by: miroslav on Mon, 26 October 2015, 10:04:27
Hey guys,

It's been a while since I last posted here. Anyhows here's my dilemma. I've been wanting to reprogramming the logic board controller on some of my mechanical keyboards (mainly my Silenced Novatouch) and was wondering if there is anyway to do it without replacing the logic board controller (if that's even possible). Any help would be much appreciated! :D

mir0
Title: Re: Reprogramming Logic Board Controller on Keyboards
Post by: jdcarpe on Mon, 26 October 2015, 10:12:53
Since the controller IC on most production keyboards is not programmable, you would need a programmable converter. Something along the lines of hasu's USB to USB keyboard converter (https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=69169.0).

Hope this helps! :)
Title: Re: Reprogramming Logic Board Controller on Keyboards
Post by: flabbergast on Mon, 26 October 2015, 10:47:23
Since the controller IC on most production keyboards is not programmable, ...
That's not entirely true, my guess would be that quite a few are actually programmable, but the manufacturers go to some lengths to prevent "normal" people from doing that. They have the capability so that they can update the firmware later on if there are some bugs to be fixed. (E.g. poker II, pok3r...)

Anyway, unless you get a real hardware wizard to reverse engineer the novatouch controller for you, jdcarpe's suggestion is the best you can do.
Title: Re: Reprogramming Logic Board Controller on Keyboards
Post by: miroslav on Mon, 26 October 2015, 22:16:10
Since the controller IC on most production keyboards is not programmable, you would need a programmable converter. Something along the lines of hasu's USB to USB keyboard converter (https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=69169.0).

Hope this helps! :)

Thanks so much for that, I'll have a look at that and see where I can get one :3

Since the controller IC on most production keyboards is not programmable, ...
That's not entirely true, my guess would be that quite a few are actually programmable, but the manufacturers go to some lengths to prevent "normal" people from doing that. They have the capability so that they can update the firmware later on if there are some bugs to be fixed. (E.g. poker II, pok3r...)

Anyway, unless you get a real hardware wizard to reverse engineer the novatouch controller for you, jdcarpe's suggestion is the best you can do.

Since the controller IC on most production keyboards is not programmable, ...
That's not entirely true, my guess would be that quite a few are actually programmable, but the manufacturers go to some lengths to prevent "normal" people from doing that. They have the capability so that they can update the firmware later on if there are some bugs to be fixed. (E.g. poker II, pok3r...)

Anyway, unless you get a real hardware wizard to reverse engineer the novatouch controller for you, jdcarpe's suggestion is the best you can do.

Yeah that was my thought as well. Since most keyboards allow the update of firmwares, it would be possible to reverse engineer the update kernel and apply my own changes. Not sure how that's going to turn out and I don't really have a spare board that I can test on since loading a kernel which isn't official could brick the board. But yeah will have a look at jdcarpes option.

Thanks for the help guys!