Peripherals Mechanical Keyboards

Topre switch, at the top of the switch press you quickly meet resistance, then you overcome it. In a "bouncy" manner (it isn't a short/sharp bump like blues or even short/soft like browns, it's longer/smoother), which means you very quickly and smoothly feel an increase in resistance up to a max point (which is about half the switch press distance), which then immediately gives way to a very smooth linear downward progression for the rest of the distance.

You feel that bump on every keypress, typing fast or not, unlike browns. It's pretty significant. You can feel it giving resistance and then it breaks, not like the little crack you feel with blues. It gives resistance over a longer period than MX, and is completely smooth all the way. Closer to rubber domes than MX, but smoother, less mushy/gluey, lighter, and the switch is registered much before you hit all the way down so it doesn't kill your fingers.

If you wanna try it, as George mentioned I'm selling a switch test bag on the marketplace that includes among about 30 others, a topre switch

 

I thought Yorkie had claimed that?

 

He was just asking about it, no interest yet registered

 

took a moment to take some new photos of my board this morning. some keyboard porn over in the thread.

 

Damn work for blocking images...

 

something new to see when you get home

 

OMG I missed that! Thanks mate

 

Hey, anyone got a couple of sheets of switch stickers left over that they'd sell?

 

Well, I finally got round to plugging the SKIData into my PC.
Lysol was right and the cheapo 2 x PS/2 to USB I bought was a waste of time. Haven't got much time as things to do this morning, but my normal setup is my WASD board via a usb to PS/2 adapter in the PS/2 port and a logitech mouse in USB.

I moved my wasd board to be straight into USB port, then tried the mouse connector from Skidata into the PS/2 port.

All fired up and the Skidata trackball works fine, but the WASD board did not register. Know that the trackball works now though

Shut down and swap skidata mouse connector for the keyboard one, then start up again. Keyboard on Skidata works fine, though again WASD board is ignored by PC. Strange but after this I'll revert to the normal setup and hopefully all is well and I'm just not thinking about it properly.

Anyways onto the SKIData
This is what it feels like to type on MX clear switches, then. Feeling a lot heavier than MX brown switches with the springs forcing the keys back up into my fingers a lot more.
The tactile bump is much more pronounced, but feels like it occurs lower on the clears. This may be partly due to having cherry DS on the Skidata and OEM caps on the wasd but I suspect it is the switches. Typing and thinking now on the baord so please bear with the rambling style. The weight of the keys makes them feel much more firm than with the lighter brown switches. Feels pretty solid too. The F keys seems to work (at least F1 brings up help well) but irritatingly there are no home, end, Pg up/down and most irritating for someone who uses it all the time for text editing, there is no delete key. Ooops found one - shift plus . on the numpad works as delete. still not as handy as a dedicated delete and would take some getting used to. There are actually a lot more differences between this qwerty DE than I expected from UK or US International ISO layouts. The () on 8 and 9 instead of 9 and 0 is just quite weird

Actually quite liking these keys though it is noticeably harder on the fingers to type this all out. Think I will need to try some extended us to really make a decision.
Anyone know what spring weight is in these??

Another interesting point is that being used to using winkey boards with 1.25 mods, the 1.5 winkeyless makes the control key feel more substantial somehow. Loving the close to hand arrow cluster on the G80 style layout here... And the scoops beat nipples or dimples hands down.

Will be packing away now till the postman delivers the expansion car I ordered with 2 PS/2 ports, then it can come out again for some more sustained use. Glad the trackball works and looking forward to using that with the board in the future but without the ability to take advantage of the upper keypad it feels like a lot of wasted deskspace..
The trackball is pretty dinky so would be a cool side addition to a 60% board if the PCB could carry and translate the signal. Way beyond my ability to do more than just imagine, but I think that would be awesome.

Anyways sorry for the ramble but hope someone found it interesting.

G

Edit, WASD board back into PS/2 Adapter and all okay - go figure. This board needs a cherry keyset though

 

Clears have a 65cN actuation force which ramps up to 100cN to bottom out. I got mine yesterday a well. It is a very nice board but I haven't had a chance to test what can be done with the top half. Too busy playing with my other toy. I also got a Goupil Golf 286 with G80-1861HAU yesterday. It's a funny little machine and it's quite quirky to get it to boot up properly. It's an amazingly powerful 10mhz cpu with 64k memory and 40mb hard drive. It has windows 3 on it.

 

So you did buy the goupil!
I liked the look of the board, poor pics on the bay but the case colour looked nice. Pics if you can would be cool.

Glad your skidata arrived, will be looking out for your thoughts on it and if you have any joy with the top half. I quite liked the clears. Think I need a switch try board to get a shot at milks. All thinking ahead to my chance at a 60% ISO from GH60 project

 

Shameless self promotion. I started a new thread, revamped it, made it look moar pretty... also... order form

http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=38146.0

 

Sure did pick it up, for $75. Not bad at all especially since the machine is fully working as far as I can tell. Goupil is a bit different than regular 1800 case body as it is beveled all the way around not just on the front. It is also a bit different more charcoal grey than the usual dark casebody color. The doulbeshots are a different color too. Have grey legend on beige and darker beige. Sadly it's typical 2KRO like most 1800 though. It's in fantastic shape, very lightly used almost like new cosmetically. Was very clean as well.

 

Still be a nice addition to your 1800 collection though, or donate it to inkieflynn.

 

If its getting donated I wanna be in line.

 

Lots of Clacks sold, still lots to go though!

 

Wow. How does a board get that dirty???
http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&id=370565973188

 

Office and business workers who just don't care. And American sun...

 

The keyboard in my local garage looks like that...