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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: chesterMcFeathers on Fri, 10 June 2016, 19:40:46
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Some enterprising fellow on ebay has these for $25 each with free shipping. The catch is they are sold "AS IS",
"Not working", "No Refunds" , and other such verbiage that indicates these are probably non functional.
On the good side, that they seem to have plenty and are taking offers. They either have red or brown cherry switches
but it doesn't look like you get a choice. I haven't asked though.
I was thinking about buying a few for the keycaps and switches. Does anyone have any experience with lower end gamer
keyboards and scavenging part from them? Would the switches be re usable?
Thanks,
chester
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Welcome to gh chester :)
They sound worth a go in my book - could be broken LEDs and fully working otherwise or they may require soldering jumper(s) to fix a break in the matrix, worst case the switches are almost certainly usable (they could have been covered in coke, that's about the only thing to break them besides intentional abuse) though desoldering all those LEDs would not be my idea of fun.
If you want some shine through caps they'd be useful too...
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I was wondering when someone else would discover that listing. I've bought 3 of those so far. It's a borked firmware thing far as I can tell. The keyboards are non-functional but basically unused. I harvested the switches from all 3 and used them to convert my Adesso 625UB to cherry reds. Might do the same with my Leopold. Haven't decided yet. $25-30 for 109 basically unused cherry reds seemed like a pretty good deal to me. Add in 100+ blue led's if you care to reuse those as well. I know I haven't found a cheaper source of cherry switches. Every once in awhile you'll find an old Wyse terminal keyboard to harvest blacks from, but even they run about $30.
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That is good to hear the switches are good. I asked the guy if all the keyboard have complete keycaps sets but
have yet to hear back from him.
Is it safe to assume that they are all the Cherry Red variety? I think they made it in both brown and red versions.
Good to hear I am not the only person who is looking to scavenge. Just search for "Gigabyte Aivia Osmium MX"
on ebay and it's the only auction that shows up if anyone else is interested. I wonder how low the "make offer"
can go...
Thanks,
chester
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All 3 that I recieved were mx reds. They arrived with all keycaps, excluding the extra macro's that originally shipped with the board when new. The packaging is aweful. They basically throw a board in a box and hand it to UPS. No packing peanuts, styrofoam, no cushioning whatsoever. One of the ones I recieved even had the little plastic caps over the headphone/microphone jacks and usb ports. Like I said pretty much unused. The serial numbers have all been removed so no hope of repair under warranty.
They are great practice though. 300+ switches removed and I can confidently say desoldering no longer makes me nervous. :p Hope your Soldapult is up to the task!
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I was wondering when someone else would discover that listing. I've bought 3 of those so far. It's a borked firmware thing far as I can tell. The keyboards are non-functional but basically unused. I harvested the switches from all 3 and used them to convert my Adesso 625UB to cherry reds. Might do the same with my Leopold. Haven't decided yet. $25-30 for 109 basically unused cherry reds seemed like a pretty good deal to me. Add in 100+ blue led's if you care to reuse those as well. I know I haven't found a cheaper source of cherry switches. Every once in awhile you'll find an old Wyse terminal keyboard to harvest blacks from, but even they run about $30.
Seems like this firmware issue can't be fixed, no? I'm looking through the installer, trying to pull out the firmware but it seems like no dice. It's coded in C++ if that helps any software hackers who want to dump time in.
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I never found a way to fix the firmware. Even emailed Gigabyte asking for the firmware and recieved "What firmware?" for a reply. Wasn't a big deal to me since I prefer TKL anyways and bought them with the intention of harvesting the switches.
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It's a crappy iOne-made keyboard, no need to bother. They're fine for harvesting switches though, if you don't mind spending the time with it.
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Made an offer on them and got 2 of them for 22 bucks each including shipping
They replied to my question about having complete keycaps and said they just shipped out the next two on the stack and could not insure that there were complete anything.
I'll post some pictures of them when I get them and show the switch removals if anyone is interested.
Thanks,
chester
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any links for these?
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ebay link:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Gaming-Desktop-Keyboard-Backlit-Gigabyte-Aivia-Osmium-MX-AS-IS-For-parts-Only-/141943259660?hash=item210c7a420c:g:~JIAAOSwZ8ZW-dnf
product site:
http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4179#ov
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https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=52580.0