After three [1, 2, 3] Ursa inspired keyboards it was time to try to do something different. For a while now I’ve seen several keyboards inspired by the original C64 design and colours, but I wasn’t a Commodore guy, I had an Atari STe when I was a kid.
The first ideas and sketches started to form properly around the start of the year, but it would take until the start of the summer before I had something to type on. I started with trying to get the characteristic F-buttons of the Atari ST to work. The first version was modular with each F-key as it’s own module, but when I glued them together did the compounding tolerances make the whole thing bowing. So instead all of it as one long piece was printed and to make the caps go straight I designed some “stabilizers”. Each F-key cap had two long stems that fit into two holes in the holder, the initial ideas was for the stems to be brass tubes and also line the holes with a (larger) brass tube. But the ones I bought didn’t quite work, it was too tight even if the datasheet said it would work with some space over. Not just me struggling against margins here 🙂 So until I get smaller rods for the keys I just printed stems and it actually worked a lot better that I expected. It’s no Holy Panda experience, but works well enough for now.
The first idea was to make something handwired and smaller that I usually use, I settled on 13×5 ortholinear and got a complete version out but before I started the actual wiring I realized that I would probably never use it if it was so different to what I was used to. So I scrapped all that.
So during spring I redesigned a case around my own 14×5 ortho PCB, I also designed to make the actual case more like the original with one top part and one bottom part. After a few iterations, I always find something that could be better, I had a case ready for sanding and colour.
As a final touch I poured some transparent resin in the small parallelogram-hole and taped a green LED to the back.
I had a bunch of Boba U4T and was quite tired of soldering mill-max sockets so for once I soldered the switches straight to the PCB. The case isn’t 100% finished, still looking for a nice cable for which I have some cool ideas, but it has moved to the office and is used at work every day I’m there.
I’m not completely satisfied with the looks of the keycaps, they are a bit more beige than I had hoped, and also I had to buy two sets to even get this layout due to there not being any ortho set. So will continue looking for better ones, more like the original Atari keycaps. And if you have any ideas please send me an email or contact me via social media.
And finally a bonus image with the deskmat I very generously was gifted by my colleague during my vacation.