I'm getting annoyed with the asymmetry of the PC104/105 keyboard arrangement. I guess the time has finally arrived for me to design and build my own, custom keyboard.
Wishlist:
- movement block ( Ins, Del, Home, End, PgUp, PgDown, ←,↑,↓,→ ) and media control keys on the left
- Letters/symbols/digits and F-keys goes into the middle
- Split main block for angled ergonomics?
- TrackPoint?
- Numeric entry block on the right.
Also, I do enjoy writing gateware more than writing firmware → FPGA.
Replying to @datenwolf@chaos.social
media control/movement on the left is something that should have happened in the early 90s
instead of that, we started to make do with wasd instead of special keys and slowly started to remove that block alltogether.
that's some huge missed opportunity there!
btw: IMHO split/angled main never was a useful idea and pos1/end/pgup/pgdn has to be alt-mode on cursor keys
Replying to @dat@social.g33ky.de
If I'm doing this, it'll become 4 PCBs of similar dimensioned pairs, instead of a single one with high aspect ratio, just for easier (=cheaper) manufacturing. Can then arrange the blocks in whatever way in a 3D printed chassis.
Replying to @datenwolf@chaos.social
actually I mostly use a 75%/TKL-Keyboard (WITH function-row!) and a seperate trackball
it would be easy to mount another input block left and glue all three to a common base plate
apart from not having a dedicated movement/media block and no glue on my trackball, I'm doing exactly that