Today's (colourful) haul

[Chyros]

Found two DigiPoS boards at the recyclers' today. Both are POS boards (obviously) with relegendable keycaps, in shades of purple. It comes with a card reader and the whole thing is pretty heavy, about 1.8 kg. It has, as you'd expect, MX blacks (why do I keep getting those?! xD)

Spoiler:

The bigger keys are much heavier and not very well stabilised. At first I thought they'd gone for some heavier switches like greys, but as it turns out, the double keys have two whole switches under them, and the big square ones four! This makes them extremely heavy and very unpleasant to press.



I also found a brand-new Acer 6511-N. Unlike all the other 6512's I've found so far this one doesn't have just rubber domes, but uses Acer dome with slider, so you'll be seeing it back at some point . Strangely, it is ANSI rather than ISO and it happens to have the exact same dyesubbed ABS caps (including an identical font) as the ones on my KB-101A, so it'll make a nice set of spare caps ^^ . The plastic cover that came with it also fits the KB-101A beautifully .

Spoiler:

[andrewjoy]

That top one is a re branded tipro.

Unfortunately the wrong way around to be cool

[Chyros]

Does anyone know what model it is exactly? These Tipro boards seem a bit confusing.

[andrewjoy]

Ask the tiproman. http://deskthority.net/kbdfr-u448/ he loves talking about them

but its MID series i can tell you that

[terrycherry]

wow, great found with the Acer 6511-N. You should take more inside the slider. Is it linear?

[Chyros]

No no, just a simple dome with slider. Very tactile, but somewhat rough on the keyfeel.

[kbdfr]

Ask the tiproman. http://deskthority.net/kbdfr-u448/ he loves talking about them

but its MID series i can tell you that

Right in all points
Tipro, (discontinued) MID series.
They have 8 rows and either 4, 6, 12 or 16 columns.
The 16 columns models are:
- either full matrix, or
- like yours, 3-rows staggered section at the top, or
- 5-rows staggered section at the top, or
- staggered section at the bottom with matrix section at the top:

4 Tipros.jpg (207.57 KiB) Viewed 2058 times

All fully programmable with a keyboard resident non-volatile memory.

If two switches in the 1x2 caps or four in the 2x2 caps are too stiff,
just remove the spring in one switch in the first case and in two (diagonally placed) in the second case.
That's what Tipro do themselves for larger orders.

And again, usual male/male PS/2 cables work for connecting the boards to a computer.
Remove the small plastic tab on one end, connect this end to the 8-pin socket of the keyboard and the other one to the computer.

[Chyros]

Cool, cheers for the info!

Why do I have to use the 8-pin socket though, can't I just use the 6-pin PS/2 one? Also, considering it's been used at PoS, what will all those weird buttons do on my computer? IIRC Tipro is programmable, but how?

[andrewjoy]

Don't want to steal the tiproman's thunder but . The standard PS/2 port is an IN port as i understand it , the mini DIN is the output. Easy to do just order a cheap Male to Male PS/2 cable and use a pair of tiny plyers to wiggle the large pin out.

Have to program the PS/2 version in 32 bit windows with the tipro MID software. I think this is the correct link http://www.tipro.net/shared_files/suppo ... _309rm.zip I do not know if this works in a VM, i suspect it does not.

A bit annoying that you need to use 32bit but thats why geeks like us should keep a old Pentium 3 with win2k on for stuff like this( you could use Windows FLP(Fundamentals for legacy PCs) too but you have to have access to MSDN or MSVLP for that).


I wonder if its possible to reverse engineer the board and replace the controller with a custom USB one.

[kbdfr]

[…] The PS/2 end of the cable connects to the computer, the 8-pin end connects to the keyboard (right socket in the pic).
If you have no cable, you can make your own using a standard male/male PS/2 cable and simply removing the small plastic tab on one end, which now will fit into the right socket.

The other socket of the keyboard (PS/2, left side in pic) is where you connect a standard keyboard to program your Tipro (or use several keyboards at a time).


[…]

About programming, Tipro seem to have taken the 32-bit PS/2 software from their website.
If someone wants it, ask me
64-bit USB controllers are available, but they cost quite a lot (~€60+shipping). Again, ask me

[andrewjoy]

Could you possibly upload the software to the wiki ?

[kbdfr]

Could you possibly upload the software to the wiki ?

That would be "publishing", and as such infringing on intellectual property laws.

[Muirium]

Indeed.

Unless you get their permission to rehost the content, of course. Know anyone at the company you could ask?

I imagine they took the file down because they're not supporting their PS/2 boards any more. To rehost it, we should probably confirm with Tipro that is the case and point it out for anyone visiting.