Craptastic Craigslist Find: BTC-5339R

[jpc]

Is this the best crappy keyboard your garage-sale money can buy?

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Look at that Reagan-era yellowing. That's a bit of white paper in the background.

This board is complete and 100% functional. As a bonus it includes a bunch of electrical tape on the cable. What's under there?

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Why it's awesome:
 * Double shots!
 * Capacitive switches. It's a proto-topre.
 * Switches are low force, 45-50g to actuate. The force feels almost constant down to the actuation point, and then linear below that. The keys can travel quite far below the actuation point. So it's perfectly comfortable.
 * Big ass Enter key and full size Backspace. Why not?

Why it's crappy:
 * Has ten gazillion miles on it
 * Oft-used keys feel mushy below the actuation point. Less-used keys aren't affected. Let me tell you how amazing "Page Up" feels.
 * I hope you like yellow things?
 * Elec. tape
 * Works with a Belkin USB<->PS2 converter, but only if the converter is connected to the PC first and to the keyboard second. Go in the reverse order, and the LEDs blink endlessly, keypresses do nothing.
 * The space bar is stiffer than everything else. I keep missing it.

If that space bar can be fixed, this might not be a bad keyboard to spend time with. You might not want to be seen together with it...

[IvanIvanovich]

Retrobrite those double shots and stick them on a Cherry MX board.  I posted some of these in the great finds section a few days ago.

[jpc]

Isn't that "Retrogasm" typeface on the legends? Just look at those curly braces.

[IvanIvanovich]

I find the typeface quite nice personally. Also the profiles are pretty close to Cherry, making these boards a good candidate for the elusive correct size ansi shift and centered capslocks to fill out a cherry doubleshot set. The match is close enough to not be too bothersome in my opinion. Also it should be a perfect match for boards that have the Steelseries layout.

[jpc]

The space bar is fixed. I swapped its spring with the spring under the Pause key.

[keyb_gr]

* Oft-used keys feel mushy below the actuation point. Less-used keys aren't affected. Let me tell you how amazing "Page Up" feels.

That's an expected disadvantage of a foam and foil capacitive board, unfortunately. Foam just isn't the kind of material that lasts an eternity, particularly under mechanical stress.

[NamelessPFG]

A BTC-5339 with double-shots? Lucky you, both of mine have pad-printed keycaps. Very worn, smoothed-out, pad-printed keycaps.

On top of that, they feel way too linear. Not clear as to when they actuate.

Finally, they commit the sin of the oversized Enter key, though the saving grace is that Backspace wasn't castrated to make room for Backslash.

Still, the PCBs hold some promise. Just have to build a different casing with different switches around them.

[jpc]

I wonder if the foam can be replaced with something better, or at least new foam.

Doh! The green legends on the Alt keys are not doubleshot. I can't tell what it is. Doesn't look pad printed. Dye sub? The SysRq legend is the same way.

[jpc]

I was a nickel short, so it's a rough estimate. Will post a better figure when I can.

My old ripometer got put into a vending machine a while back. Whoops.