JD45

unblocked JD45 - potato picture plus it's dirty. sums up how I feel about the board...

This board was bought used on r/mechmarket. The original cherry blacks were R&R'd with Gateron blues jailhoused with Van Keyboard's gaskets. The bottom row is a bit strange; rather than being completely filled with keycaps, some spaces occurred due to my preferred position of the split spacebar (bs+space). DCS for qwerty keys, DSA for the bottom row + modifiers. The milled aluminum case is a tank, and the build quality is solid.

But it isn't the endgame: on small keyboards like this, the infuriating typewriter row staggering of yesteryear is really noticeable. I never really minded the row stagger when using the Model M, but the small form factor makes it apparent. It seems like a minor thing, but this was the impetus for taking keyboard design into my own hands...

IBM Model M

my dad's IBM Model M, refurbished

He has no idea how it came into his possession, and it sat in the basement until I found it. The original case has been replaced with a NOS gray shell, and the blue modifier keys were from Unicomp. Thankfully I didn't have to bolt-mod the plate; it didn't have much signs of use

LEDs were swapped from green to blue; finding blue LEDs with a low nit value was actually the hardest part of this build.

Hello there

welcome to Odd Rocket Keyboards

This blog will document my search for the endgame keyboard. Gerbers and software will be open-sourced.

What is endgame? For me, it's a minimalist keyboard, preferably low profile. YMMV.

The yellow thing is a Faemina baby, a home espresso machine manufactured in Italy from the 50s through the 70s. More info is here at Francesco Ceccarelli's excellent website. Odd Rocket's name was inspired by this little machine, which is actually in need of a new piston seal...