Das III Impressions, Majestouch with Blanks

[arbrandes]

Hi folks,

Just got my Das III Ultimate, love it.  The shininess even matches my monitor at work!  Had a bit of trouble connecting it to my Eee PC, since the beast draws more power than the humble netbook has to offer.  Nothing that a powered USB hub couldn't solve, though.  No key transposition issues so far, but that just may be because I type too slowly.

I also had trouble connecting it at home.  My Asus P5KC motherboard wouldn't boot with the Das connected, hanging on "Initializing USB controllers" .  Found someone with the same issue, and it seems to be Asus specific:

http://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=63907

But all is well that ends well, and the Das is perfect for work.  Nevertheless, my home box is now short one cool mechanical keyboard, and I've decided to get a Majestouch with n-key rollover.  What's my best bet to get one with blank keycaps?  I've already emailed elitekeyboards.com, but I gather from other threads on the forum that they don't carry them.  What should I do?  Use j-goods.net?

Thanks,
Adolfo

[o2dazone]

Elitekeyboards will be stocking blank keycaps in a month.

[IBI]

Had a bit of trouble connecting it to my Eee PC, since the beast draws more power than the humble netbook has to offer.  Nothing that a powered USB hub couldn't solve, though.

I think it must be a problem with the Das, I can plug a portable hard drive into my eee (701) and that works fine, and portable hard drives are very close to the maximum power USB can provide (if you stick it on the end of a 1m extension cable it fails to work for example).

[arbrandes]

I can plug a portable hard drive into my eee (701) and that works fine, and portable hard drives are very close to the maximum power USB can provide

I'm afraid my description wasn't accurate.  The Das actually worked fine plugged directly to the Eee (albeit taking a bit longer to boot), but the SD reader stopped working.  I inferred the Das was sucking up all the available power, and tested my hypothesis by hooking it up to a powered USB hub.  Since it worked, I'm guessing the Das is pretty power-hungry, possibly in the same category as portable HDs and other USB devices with electrical motors.

I'll even go as far as saying that, aside from the key transposition issue, all the Das's problems being reported stem from this power issue.  Maybe we should tell the folks at Metadot to warn users about this upfront.

Adolfo