[Coco] CoCo MECH mechanical keyboard project

[Mark J. Blair]

> On Sep 14, 2018, at 1:05 PM, Zippster <zippster278 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I designed a mechanical keyboard for the CoCo.  I need to do a little more
> work on refining it, but I’m really pleased with how the project has gone so far.

It looks great! I love it! I had heard about your project on the CoCo Crew podcast, but I hadn't seen it because of my Facebook allergy. Thank you very much for sharing a blog post about your project.

I had started working on a project to make a keyboard upgrade for my CoCo 3 a few years ago, also using MX series keyswitches. I was planning on using the clear variety (tactile feedback, without loud click, and the stronger feel option), but of course any of the six styles can be mixed and matched to suit individual preferences. I was planning on a new layout with an inverted-T cursor key arrangement, and I was going to use custom-printed keycaps from a company that does one-off custom keycap sets using dye sublimation printing. But I got distracted by another shiny object before I got to the point of starting PCB layout. Congratulations to you for seeing it all the way through! Your laser-marked keycaps look great.

Hmm, I have access to both CO2 moving-gantry and YaG fiber optic + galvanometer marking lasers at work. Maybe I'll consider marking my own keycaps if I ever resume work on my own custom keyboard upgrade.

I think that John Linville recently mentioned some confusion about why everybody seems to re-invent almost the same wheels at around the same times. I can only speak for myself, but I think that my motivation for considering doing the same thing that others have already done is that I'm more interested in doing the development than in having the result. That might also partly explain why I start so many more projects than I finish: Figuring out how to do it is a lot of the fun for me, but actually doing it is just hard work! And I know that once I finish something I'll probably just use it once or twice and then put it on a shelf, anyway.

-- 
Mark J. Blair <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/