Making a tenkeyless from a fullsize keyboard by cutting it in half
Some 10 years ago I had a Cherry G80-3000 full-size keyboard that I wanted to be a tenkeyless. So I cut the keyboard in two parts and made it work again. Madness, but it worked.
Full gallery here: https://imgur.com/a/78WwF
11 replies
So you cut away the best feature?
I guess that's debatable, I just wanted the mouse closer ;)
I get that. I wish southpaw layout was more common.
For my home setup I just decided a separate numpad/macropad with a 65/75% was the answer. Or wait until Candy Bar R4 😊
One of the coolest things I've seen in a while! There's an olden term for people like you: sorcerer. Haha
How did you make it work again? I couldn't tell from the shots.
The small board that was above the numpad has all the smarts for the whole keyboard, so I had to follow the traces it was attached to and find a new location to wire it in at. Luckily the big PCB I cut in half is pretty simple so I could just visually see where everything went and run a new wire there.
Nice!! Super cool! I tried to do something like that with a modern keyboard, but the "PCB" was just three pieces of plastic sheeting and the brains was not something that can be easily altered. Still haven't given up, though, and you have me more motivation.
Beautiful job! TKL don’t get enough love
Lol, I thought this was a Unicomp Mini M at first.
I would have cut out the arrow key / pg up/dn block and reglued the keypad area. I use the keypad far more often than that area.
But I'm also crazy because I have a separate standalone Bluetooth keypad for my left hand as well so I have double the keypads!
That's actually amazing.