Mini art and the M-star style
Posted: 05 Dec 2022, 22:44
I picked up one of the early Unicomp Mini-M's shortly after they were released.
It's a great keyboard, but unfortunately the controller has been problematic.
The keyboard sometimes is unresponsive when the computer boots, and needs to be unplugged and re-plugged. It's also prone to the Q and other keys becoming unresponsive. My firmware shows as revision 0752. I believe these problems were remedied to some degree after later firmware revisions, but I've been reluctant to send the keyboard back so have been living with the issues. I came across the Level One Techs controller replacement project a while back, and have been checking back to monitor progress from time to time. Having a reliable controller with the ability to remap would take care of my two biggest issues with this keyboard. When I saw the controllers had made it to the store, I decided to get one. Being a cheap bastard, I got one in kit form. I can manage soldering up a Teensy for a Soarer's, so I figured I could handle putting together a kit.
Which may have been optimistic.
Here's what you get. The board, and taped to some cardboard, the bluepill, a usb connector, and two friction rubbon connectors.
The board is well labeled and eveything lays out nicely.
The biggest problem for my old eyes and shakey hands was not blobbing two pins together with an overabundance of solder.
I got the thing assembled and plugged into into a machine to make sure it came up. The led lit up and the PC announced it had found a Model J keyboard. Then I opened up the keyboard and extracted the old controller. The instructions mention later models have posidrive screws securing the case, but mine has the old school Model M hex screws that require a thin socket driver. The easiest way to remove the friction washers that hold the stock controller in place is by cutting them. My plan is to secure the new controller with a dab of hot glue on each post.
Here is the old, cursed controller, with the new controller.
When I got everything connected for the test, I found the new controller was also cursed, most likely due to my shoddy work.
I fired up switch hitter, and all was looking good until I tried the F9-F12 block. They keys didn't register, then the board started spewing random phantom keypresses. This didn't stop until I unplugged the board and plugged it back in. Another test shows every other key seems to be working, but hitting the last block of function keys causes it to freak out.
I'm trying to figure out what could cause this behavior. My untrained eye doesn't see anything glaringly obvious.
My next step is to try and figure out the matrix, but this requires setting up QMK and getting the code from the m-star repo merged in. The ultimate goal is to get vial going so the keyboard can be easily programmed without the need to reflash it every time I want to make a change. I'm currently trying to get my head around git, QMK, Via, and Vial. It makes me wish this could have been done with Soarer's, which is dead nuts simple and can be easily reprogrammed. Unfortunately, that path of the m-star got derailed, as evidenced by the shitshow thread that erupted when it was suggested someone could discover his identity and try and get permission to open source his work.
It's a great keyboard, but unfortunately the controller has been problematic.
The keyboard sometimes is unresponsive when the computer boots, and needs to be unplugged and re-plugged. It's also prone to the Q and other keys becoming unresponsive. My firmware shows as revision 0752. I believe these problems were remedied to some degree after later firmware revisions, but I've been reluctant to send the keyboard back so have been living with the issues. I came across the Level One Techs controller replacement project a while back, and have been checking back to monitor progress from time to time. Having a reliable controller with the ability to remap would take care of my two biggest issues with this keyboard. When I saw the controllers had made it to the store, I decided to get one. Being a cheap bastard, I got one in kit form. I can manage soldering up a Teensy for a Soarer's, so I figured I could handle putting together a kit.
Which may have been optimistic.
Here's what you get. The board, and taped to some cardboard, the bluepill, a usb connector, and two friction rubbon connectors.
The board is well labeled and eveything lays out nicely.
- layout.jpg (1.33 MiB) Viewed 4910 times
I got the thing assembled and plugged into into a machine to make sure it came up. The led lit up and the PC announced it had found a Model J keyboard. Then I opened up the keyboard and extracted the old controller. The instructions mention later models have posidrive screws securing the case, but mine has the old school Model M hex screws that require a thin socket driver. The easiest way to remove the friction washers that hold the stock controller in place is by cutting them. My plan is to secure the new controller with a dab of hot glue on each post.
Here is the old, cursed controller, with the new controller.
- old&new.jpg (3.15 MiB) Viewed 4910 times
I fired up switch hitter, and all was looking good until I tried the F9-F12 block. They keys didn't register, then the board started spewing random phantom keypresses. This didn't stop until I unplugged the board and plugged it back in. Another test shows every other key seems to be working, but hitting the last block of function keys causes it to freak out.
- soldered.jpg (1.24 MiB) Viewed 4910 times
My next step is to try and figure out the matrix, but this requires setting up QMK and getting the code from the m-star repo merged in. The ultimate goal is to get vial going so the keyboard can be easily programmed without the need to reflash it every time I want to make a change. I'm currently trying to get my head around git, QMK, Via, and Vial. It makes me wish this could have been done with Soarer's, which is dead nuts simple and can be easily reprogrammed. Unfortunately, that path of the m-star got derailed, as evidenced by the shitshow thread that erupted when it was suggested someone could discover his identity and try and get permission to open source his work.
