Review. Moved from
Propac with AT plug and BigAss enter (aka bird? plane?).
First impressions
It is actually not as yellow in real life as in the picture -- that is an artifact of lighting and camera.
The board was in practicaly new condition, and came in what I think is its original box with manual. The cable is coiled and very short. The manual has a picture of
yellow water pouring down on the keyboard ...
It is awful to type on, and I think that is mostly because of the rubber splash-guard. The key travel is low with a very soft landing. If you press a key down too much, it takes longer for it to snap back up again.
The click sound is even more higher-pitched than on my (real) Cherry boards. They feel a bit less tactile, but I think that is also because of the rubber guard.
Key capsThe key caps are high, thin and double-shot.
There is a rubber cup around each shaft.
Only the
Space Bar and right
Shift have stabilizers. The numpad has none.
All wide key caps have
slots for Cherry stabilizers, though .., except for
Enter.
Two of the four stabilizer slots on the
Enter key have been dremel'ed down and a plunger has been
glued there. The plunger goes through a cup in the rubber sheet where an ANSI
/ key would be, but there is nothing on the inside. There is only the rubber sheet to provide any stability.
InsideThe switches are indeed clicky fake Cherries. Real Cherry key caps are very loose on them.
The manual specifies the actuating force as 90 +- 20 cN. I have no way of measuring, but without the rubber sheet they are definitely stiffer than my Blue Cherries.
The switches are of the plate-mount variety without fixing pins, and the rubber sheet was obviously designed to fit onto a plate, but
there is no metal plate inside the keyboard!
The PCB has soldering pads for both ANSI and ISO layout.. Some holes for stabilizers have been drilled, but are unused, others were not drilled.
The controller is from Holtek. No diodes. All jumpers are in-between switches, none inside them.
IdentificationWho made it is still a mystery ...
The box has a sticker that say "ARDOR" "keyboard of" "waterproof".
The model number and the FCC-ID on the underside label is only "KB102". "Made in Taiwan R.O.C"
The PCB has the "PCB is KB-2101/2" on both sides, and that's it.
The PCB and key caps do
not match any Chicony parts that I have seen on the web -- there are differences.
The manual leaflet does not give any hint either.
What is it good for?Much nicer to type on without the rubber sheet. However, it must obviously have been part of the case design because the PCB is not stable inside the keyboard without it, and rattles quite a lot. This may be why I couldn't identify the case before.
Keycaps are relatively nice, except for the broken
Enter key.
I think that if I cut off the domes from the rubber sheet, I could use it for dampening in boards with plate-mounted Cherry switches.
Seen here with a real Cherry switch, that I used just for testing. You can see that it was designed to rest on a plate.
I'll likely use the switches for testing mods.. Maybe they would be better lighter springs. Too bad that no metal plate was included.. I want one for a build.
