Author Topic: List of keyboards with only 1 key profile (so you can re-arrange keys) (Read 7903 times)

hoggy · « **on:** Sat, 01 January 2011, 01:11:21 »

I thought it might be handy to have a list of keyboards that make it easy to re-arrange the keys to fit Dvorak, Colemak and others.

Normally, keyboards have keys with different profiles, and would only make an ugly and probably uncomfortable keyboard if you moved keys to different rows.

The ones I know about -

Kinesis Freestyle (rubber domes)
Model M (M13 is a little awkward - g and h accommodate the trackpoint)

If you want cherry switches you might have more luck with POS boards...

msiegel · « **Reply #1 on:** Sat, 01 January 2011, 01:28:11 »

i like this idea

eMps · « **Reply #2 on:** Sat, 01 January 2011, 04:10:14 »

Additionally, one needs to be able to move all of the keys. I have two boards with uniform key profiles, but the F and J keys only fit into their corresponding sockets. The plungers (?) are shaped differently.

EDIT: I guess it wouldn't be too hard to mod it, but still..

Soarer · « **Reply #3 on:** Sat, 01 January 2011, 05:17:16 »

Cherry ML4100 and ML4400, not full size though.

Model F.

Pylon · « **Reply #4 on:** Sat, 01 January 2011, 10:01:31 »

Apple Aluminum.
Inland 810754. ($4 rubber dome)

7bit · « **Reply #5 on:** Sat, 01 January 2011, 10:09:16 »

Quote from: hoggy;271480

I thought it might be handy to have a list of keyboards that make it easy to re-arrange the keys to fit Dvorak, Colemak and others.

Normally, keyboards have keys with different profiles, and would only make an ugly and probably uncomfortable keyboard if you moved keys to different rows.

The ones I know about -

Kinesis Freestyle (rubber domes)
Model M (M13 is a little awkward - g and h accommodate the trackpoint)

If you want cherry switches you might have more luck with POS boards...

You never get fired for buying IBM.

Unicomp will do as well.

Daniel Beaver · « **Reply #6 on:** Sat, 01 January 2011, 11:18:22 »

Model F's, also.

I thought the apple aluminum F and J keys had flipped stabilizers, so that you couldn't use those keys anywhere else. Am I imagining things?

Findecanor · « **Reply #7 on:** Sat, 01 January 2011, 14:30:26 »

Practically all membrane keyboards that have a curved back plate or completely flat keys should be.

Just a couple of them (ones I have or have researched):

IBM Model M2 (flat)

NMB rubber domes (curved steel back plate):
OEM'd to many manufacturers, including Digital Equipment (white), Silicon Graphics (granite speckle pattern), Compaq (white)

Fujitsu rubber domes:
FKB-xxx (curved plastic back plate)
Fujitsu Peerless (curved steel back plate). OEM'ed to many.

Keytronic ErgoForce (curved steel backplate)

tash · « **Reply #8 on:** Sat, 01 January 2011, 22:21:16 »

hey, but the F and the J has a relief
if you move them, you wont be able to touch type by feeling it.
My point is, why move the keys if you aren't mean to look at them.
(the F&J sense maybe is just a personal habbit)

hoggy · « **Reply #9 on:** Sun, 02 January 2011, 01:20:53 »

Quote from: tash;271856

hey, but the F and the J has a relief
if you move them, you wont be able to touch type by feeling it.
My point is, why move the keys if you aren't mean to look at them.
(the F&J sense maybe is just a personal habbit)

I'd agree, but if you change layouts things become interesting while you try to adapt. Entering passwords on wrongly labelled keys can be a real pain.

clickclack · « **Reply #10 on:** Sun, 02 January 2011, 02:30:27 »

I am sure some of this can be found in the Wiki but, here are a couple-

Deck keyboard (not the legend 104, just the compact original one)
TG3

There are some random g80 type POS keyboards that have relegendable keys.

sixty · « **Reply #11 on:** Sun, 02 January 2011, 11:17:35 »

The switched stabilizers for the F and J are probably part of the assembly unit, where poor Chinese kids use it to navigate the board when putting on keycaps.

Some of you might have noticed that Unicomp usually uses differently colored keycaps on two-piece keycaps for F and J too. I noticed the very same on a few Taiwan ALPS boards too, where the F and J white ALPS had been marked with a red marker.

I'm sure this is related to some ancient assembly techniques.

sixty · « **Reply #12 on:** Sun, 02 January 2011, 11:22:00 »

Quote from: ripster;271962

Well, whatever it takes for them to work faster.

Source.

Is that from that PDF we had going around a while ago? Actually thinking about this for a moment, it makes a lot of sense if the keys are labelled while on the keyboard. Obviously they just have to put the nub keys on the oddball mounting then and they are good to go, assuming all other keys are blank.

Edit: Did you ninja-edit the source in or am I blind.. I swear there was none when I quoted it first.

Nadger · « **Reply #13 on:** Sun, 02 January 2011, 12:03:38 »

@OP Add Razer Lycosa to the list. Not mechanical but still all the keys are the same low profile so rearranging them to a different layout wouldnt affect you other than the f and j nubs

aynjell · « **Reply #14 on:** Thu, 06 January 2011, 18:29:54 »

First post, long time Das Keyboard user.

Anyway, any blank keyboard like the optionally blank das keyboard and unicomp boards will work fine especially because nubs or curved keys will work without movement. For me it's the most elegant solution... but learning those key setups is a pain.

I should look into some other key arrangement, but I would need to read a lot about it first to figure out which ones I care about. Key placement for various shortcuts is very important to me.

Edit, I tried dvorak and one thing I liked about it is I could guess where keys were. Physically intuitive movements got me the letter I wanted on more than one key if I recall. It was a very interesting, almost a psychic feeling, but common commands like copy/paste/lock/etc were all re-arranged in ways that broke my flow and reduced productivity. Colemak looks REALLY good because it doesn't move 2 of the 3 listed keys and the one that is moved isn't moved enough for me to care about.

Pylon · « **Reply #15 on:** Thu, 06 January 2011, 18:31:27 »

If you look carefully sideways down the length of your keyboard, you'll see that on most boards every row has a different profile. That will mess things up.

jpc · « **Reply #16 on:** Thu, 06 January 2011, 20:15:31 »

My ThinkPad has uniform shape keys. Like the M13, G H and B are special to fit the track point.

UPDATE: that's not quite like the M13, on which the B is standard, thanks ripster.

Computer-Lab in Basement · « **Reply #17 on:** Thu, 06 January 2011, 20:27:16 »

With a Model M wouldn't it be as simple as switching keycaps and then remapping each key? I had thought of doing this with my M at one point and trying DVORAK.

ch_123 · « **Reply #18 on:** Fri, 07 January 2011, 08:03:45 »

On Model Ms, the stem was usually grey, except for the F and J keys where it is white. Again, makes it easier to figure out the layout.

Oqsy · « **Reply #19 on:** Fri, 07 January 2011, 23:29:32 »

in my experience different manufacturers used different stem colors, but all of them used this to some degree... I have 2 Unicomps, 1 Lexmark, and 1 IBM Model M, and all 4 have different color combinations for normal key stems and the F/J key stems.

hoggy · « **Reply #20 on:** Sun, 09 January 2011, 08:21:49 »

The goldtouch keyovation keyboard only uses the one profile.

Tony · « **Reply #21 on:** Tue, 11 January 2011, 05:19:22 »

I have changed my Mitsumi (model KFKEA4XT) keyboard to Colemak today. All keys are the same, so any layout is possible with this keyboard.

Tony · « **Reply #22 on:** Sun, 16 January 2011, 23:53:24 »

Keytronic is fine to change layout too. Here is the Colemak layout again

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Author Topic: List of keyboards with only 1 key profile (so you can re-arrange keys) (Read 7903 times)