17h ago

It's got a METH key!

Keyboard from 2010 built by TG3 for a Siemens chemistry analyzer. I cleaned it up, added some weight to the bottom, and converted to USB. Cherry MX Black and PBT Dye-subbed DCS caps. Take a peek at what should be F9 and F10 (and are after conversion), as well as some of the keys above the numpad, which, tangentially, now has 5 keys that do absolutely nothing related to what's written on them.

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Hello I would like to visit your shop
- Ahh, but is it a FUN keyboard, or a narc keyboard?
  
  It's s keyboard that allows Walgreens pharmacies to operate at the speed of fossilization. Greatly upsetting the very patient and kind customer base who don't bother to check for their messages informing them their drugs are ready for pick-up.
  Ask me how I know
Cock and Meth?
I hear meth is a hell of a key.
- To quote Jenna Maroney, "they contain a little bit of meth which is something my body needs anyway."
god bless this meth.
- bleth
SMASH that p8 until your eyes dilate
How did you convert it? Slapped on a standard PS2 to USB converter, or something fancier?
- In the picture you can just make out the Pro Micro "Soarer's Converter," which I flashed to use a firmware that includes the VIAL graphical configurator. I then taped that old Micro-USB cable to secure it and stuffed the whole thing into the case.
  Hardware wise, this is a simple PS/2 to USB conversion, but because it was made for a bit of commercial lab equipment, the software side got a little weird, almost like it was high on something, LOL. The numpad doesn't include the usual math operators, NumLock is non-existent (and in fact this keyboard forcibly turns it back on if you find a way to turn it off), there's no Windows/Super key (not uncommon on older designs), 34 of the keys above the main clusters actually send combined keys (F9+A through F9+Z, then F10+A through F10+H). Someone else had already figured out that using F9 and F10 as your "layer switch" or "Function" keys is the way to unlock that, so I did the same. I only had one extra layer (plus two "Combo" keys) to play with, so I was only able to convert 28 of the 34, but those 28 now do pretty normal stuff: F keys, navigation keys, media keys, etc.
  The other quirk is that, while the slightly longer spacebars (7 key "units", versus the usual 6.25) are not rare for keyboard nerds, the stabilizer rod for this one is on slightly nonstandard spacing, so I'm stuck with it until I can source another one. Luckily, the caps themselves are pretty decent.
Reminds me of the original Amiga computers.
- Agreed. Many Amigas had a shape and color scheme that was fairly similar.

13 comments