on the menu today oh wow and do you have any comment so let's get ready to do some soldering
welcome hello chip dippers in a recent recipode i was joined by lady fractic for another
retro fun boxing and one of the items was a mini keyboard for the c64 mini donated by
a person with a strangely familiar name dean woodyatt didn't he star in eastenders PF: all
right love how's it going come down the cafe LF: i saw you sleeping with my sister PF:
that's not your sister that's my mum wait that's even worse
this is a c64 mini keyboard kit obviously this doesn't work correct obviously this turns into
a fully working keyboard that will go under there hey google who plays ian in eastenders
ian beale was played by adam woodyatt adam woodyatt
now not only did i appear in a few episodes of eastenders before i downgraded to los angeles
oright hey nice to see you hey
you was happy to sleep with both of us after all you
there's no need for that
some of my best acting there uh but dean told me that adam woodyatt
is in fact his fourth or fifth cousin something adam's very happy about *crying screech*
wait what's this video about again oh yeah the keyboard
let's have a look at what we get in the kit these are the switches you saw those during the unboxing
these are diodes and they provide bounce back protection for the key presses here is the
gorgeous pcb itself everything's pretty clearly marked so you can see all the little diodes
go next to each switch and here on the back or from a nice illustration you can see where the
arduino goes now this here is the arduino device this is what talks to the c64 mini
and tells it how to interpret the key presses from the switches and it's similar to those keyboard
bridges that you've seen me use in various projects including where i am now using for
my everyday computer an apple macintosh keyboard with my modern imac so this does the translating
and adam i mean dean has been very clever and he's actually using the original commodore 64 keyboard
matrix now that means that you can use in theory this mini keyboard with a real commodore 64.
also in there we have this usb adapter and that's what's going to allow the keyboard to talk to the
c64 mini these are headers which are going to allow the arduino to connect to the board
this little guy seems kind of lonely doesn't he um i think he's on his own because that's
the shift lock key which has instead of a one-time press it has a latching mechanism
and finally i originally thought this was a mount but actually this will come
back to this in a minute is to allow you to mold your own key caps speaking of keycaps
let's get started printing some pla ones with my 3d printer and see if they're
going to be good enough detail and good enough quality to use on top of the actual switches
themselves
now if that print doesn't work another interesting option might be the new prototyping
service by PCBWayyyy the options include cnc machining and high quality 3d printing
because as we all know pcb stands for prototypes created beautifully doesn't it
so let's get ready to do some soldering i'm actually going to be using this
this is a solder fume extractor it's just a fan that sucks all the solder through
this carbon filter i do worry a little bit about inhaling a lot of lead-based solder so
this is definitely going to help if you want to see links to this and all the stuff that
i use in all my videos check out my website perifractic.com/tools because i'm a big tool
let's turn this on and get soldering -
aghhhh!
and after a little while you'll have something that looks a little bit
like this but the question is does it work i mean can you type on it
do you have any comment on the mini keyboard *sniffing*
okay thank you madam and what about you sir *crunching*
thank you for your comment
excuse me ma'am do you have any comment on the mini keyboard *crunching and sniffing*
but yes you can type on it however those micro switches just aren't very comfortable under the
fingers which brings us back to 3d printed keycaps let's see how they're getting along key bloody
mendous now i actually tried another five times over two days and just couldn't get the print
to work which is a bit of a first for me and i think the keycaps are just too small and too fine
at detail by their very nature however that's okay as ad-dean himself says pla likely just won't look
good enough and it turns out there are actually three different options for making the keycaps one
pla which we're ruling out now two resin printing and here hot off the press is an exclusive look
at ian's dean's sorry latest attempt completed literally the day i was finishing this very video
now obviously color and detail may change but it gives you a good idea of what's possible and
he plans to sell these keycaps with the kid soon and option three is using the c64 mini's original
keycaps obviously these ones are fixed but i'm interested to see what their backsides look like
you know under the undersides you know what i mean oh that'd be a little screw under there
beautiful why didn't i do that to begin with now the big reveal
oh they're actually kind of keycappy well i'm back now from looking at adam wood yatt dean woodyatt's
blog and actually he has a really interesting technique for turning these into keycaps
the idea is using a belt sander you grind away this lower layer you can see is quite thin here
and the more that it disintegrates eventually you're left just with the keys themselves
with no base plate around them and then they start to come off that's why he gives you this
you fill this with plaster of paris and then it acts as a you can see the screw holes line up here
it acts as a holder where you can create firstly a mold of the front side of these
once that's dried you can drop each individual keycap into its mold hole where it originally sat
and then you can get your pcb and lay it on top and all of those little micro switches
will fall into the appropriate hole of the appropriate key perfectly lined up once it's dried
you get something that looks a little bit like this wow but you're probably wondering how those
keyboards are actually working in other words how things are wired up inside let me show you
you just screw the keyboard back into the c64 mini the screw holes on the new pcb
line up perfectly then all that remains is to connect the wires that's where the usb hub
comes in now i won't show you the whole process as dean gives really great instructions and it's very
simple but in a nutshell the c64 pcb connects here to the hub which initially seems like a
problem as if we flip it over you can see that doing that disables one of the mini's external
usb ports but the hub gives you two inputs to replace the one that you used up with the hub
meaning one can connect to the keyboard and the other to the original usb port on the side of the
mini so you don't lose any of those by performing this super cool mod and what do i think of dean
would you i got the name right a teen would yet mini keyboard well we give it four and a half
chips out of five as soon as those keycaps are available it's easily a five out of five product
and that's about it for the mini keyboard i'll let you escape and give you some space
and i'm a bit shifty but i'll try to update you when the resin keys become available
either way keep an eye on what's his name's blog links in the description thanks for watching
subscribe and support below and cheerio and do you have any comment *crunching*
do you have any comment on the mini keyboard *crunching and sniffing*
thank you for your comment