Hey guys, I was excited about a project I have started so I felt like sharing where I sit with it at the moment. Basically I bought a Chicony KB-5581 at Savers a while ago and tried to resurrect it. It looks like this:
Oddly it worked for a while, but then became unreliable, and now it doesn't work at all. I replaced the caps on it and no dice. So, instead of continuing down that trail, since it is kind of a beast size wise, I decided I'm going to remove the switches and reuse the caps for my first handmade keyboard. It has MX blues that are pretty nice to type one, lighter than other, newer blue switches I have tried.
As I'm planning to use the caps that come on this board, this poses some limitation to the layout. Also, since I am planning to game with this keyboard, that has driven some of the decisions as far as how many keys to have. The following is what I have decided to go with:
I ordered the plate earlier tonight, so that's pretty exciting! The plate color is close to some paint that I have already, and it seemed in keeping with the concept of trying to use what I have on hand to go ahead and use that for this plate. I am considering seeing about cutting down the original case to house this thing, but I am aware that might not work out. If not, I'm pretty confident I could make something out of wood instead.
So there you go. It may be a while before I pull together all the parts, but it should be fun! Updates to follow.
::--Note, the legends on the front of the caps won't be there on the board. They're on there to help me keep track of what does what, and what use I might make of a few bonus keys--::
