Interestingly, the speaker part and the keyboard part are completely separate. The "cable" consists of four separate cables (keyboard, power, line out, mic in) in a thin sleeve. Mine was supplied with AT plug on the keyboard cable and Y-adapter that converted PS2 into AT DIN and barell jack for the speaker power. The keyboard label indeed says it is powered by 9V DC, but I guess that never really happened as PS/2 is 5V no matter what various devices say.
Edit: And as for the supper hard to find nowadays part: I suspect that part of the reason is that the keyboard module inside the thing is ridiculously sensitive to even minor spills.
Also LOL:
> it has the advantage of packing the best sound system I have ever come across on a keyboard
- nearly made me cry.
- solved my back pain.
When you didn't learn to type properly, relearning to type can be a very difficult task; re-learning on a split keyboard is particularly unforgiving. Around three weeks into re-learning I was convinced I would never learn properly and that I'd wasted a lot of time and money (I was freelancing at the time) on something that wouldn't help me eat, never mind sleep.
Two weeks later I was back up to normal typing speeds, a month after that I was faster than ever. Two months or so after that, my back pain was gone.
Of course, my back pain was caused by sitting lopsided - something an overdominant hand on a standard keyboard pushes you towards. No amount of exercise and posture correction was solving it - but when the true cause was resolved it cleared up (with exercise) very quickly.
I'd buy this keyboard again in a heartbeat.
Not learning to type properly is probably the best thing you can do for your wrists when typing.
Keeping fingers on home row is very bad posture for your wrists on a normal keyboard.
YMMV, ergonomics are highly personal with respect to your body size and proportions. We didn't have the proliferation of keyboard layouts then that we do now. Perhaps if the Iris or Corne had existed then, I would still be using my thumbs for modifier keys in a 40% layout. I never got the hang of tapdance or hold modifiers.
The Atreus layout is the only one I can still use somewhat, because the thumbs are held closer to the hand rather than splayed out.
Details at https://josef-adamcik.cz/electronics/another_year_for_sofle....
Also stretching and mobility training.. using a split keyboard has been awesome because you really feel the difference compared to a "normal" keyboard once you've been paying attention to opening up the shoulders
Also surprising was that after I got there, I could also touch type pretty easily on a normal keyboard. But my old ad hoc 5 finger typing had somehow disappeared entirely.
> - solved my back pain.
Reminds me of the first time I got to sit in an Actually Good chair that came with a new job. My back was killing me for the first couple weeks as the decades-old knots undid themselves.
I got to relive it when I went back to crappy office chairs at my next gig.
It's good enough for typing for long sessions and reliable enough to type on without much thinking.
It has great features though. Automatic backlight and standby via hall & ambient light sensors, great key texture and weight, scissor switches instead of bog-standard membrane, etc.
It's not a mechanical keyboard and not smooth as one, but it's not an enemy of fingers and hands.
Logitech's bolt receiver is great though. Encrypted, low latency and has native Linux support via Solaar.
I have 3 mechanical keyboards, but one is too big, others are not in my native layout and miss a couple of keys which I need for certain characters, so they are delegated to long coding sessions at home.
Oh you mean… OK. The one on my 2008 unibody MacBook, which I likely put the most hours in on of any of them. Then the one on my ancient and lovely Thinkpad T240 — one of the most pragmatically delightful computers ever — and probably the N33SX I owned in 1992.
The keyboard on the M1 Max MBP is quite nice, too.
The only way to top that would be someone eschewing portability for a mechanical keyboard of some kind. I would totally buy that
Fatar learned a lot of lessons from Yamaha in that regard.
Looking forward to adding an Expressive E Osmose to my rig soon ..
Just the fact that a synth thing was so (relatively) affordable and accessible and also made music we heard all the time.
I should probably make a Dexed thing. Ultimately I don't even play an instrument with frets, let alone keys, so it would only be for tinkering.
The Yamaha FSR1 would be nice, too! :)
No keyboard on an FS1R, although a workstation version of the FS1R would kick serious ass.
Get a Zynthian and dive right in to all the FM synthesis you can possibly imagine, and more. Its pretty freakin' powerful. Plus, you can do all kinds of mad things with it, vis a vis oddball controllers and such.
At the moment I am mostly playing lap steel but it's early days as an electric player so I am trying to not spend much money :-)
For lap steel which is continuous pitch I feel I'm more likely to settle on a Boss SY synth pedal or something signal-processing-based like it, rather than MIDI. But these days audio-based midi-tracking like MIDI Guitar 2/3 seems to work quite well. I know of at least one player using a Fishman Triple Play on a lap steel but that's an expensive experiment.
>Boss SY synth pedal or something signal-processing-based like it
.. is exactly what the Zynthian delivers, plus way, way, way more. You can run Dexed on it, and also run multiple signal-processing chains for your lap steel. It is huge bang for the buck! Especially if you do live things, you can have Dexed tracks running in parallel to your FX chain ..
Just sayin', take a closer look. For lap steel (and indeed any similar instruments), Zynthian is a godsend. (Get a good mic for it too, of course..)
I am positive you will find it extremely rewarding to pipe your lap steel through these:
https://zynthian.org/engines#effect
.. alongside these:
https://zynthian.org/engines#synth
(Dexed is but one in a very, very sexy list..)
I used a friend's ErgoDox a few years ago, and quite liked it, but what holds me back is the Topre switches. If only it was feasible to acquire individual Topre switches and put them onto a custom PCB...
Here's hoping someone on HN will swoop in and tell me "It's totally possible! Just _____!"
I'm back to a cherry style board with silent tactile switches now but have half a mind to try and find a 75%ish layout with exploded arrow keys and with silent Topre switches.
There is also the XVX Whisper switch, with has a Topre-like mechanism for Hall Effect keyboards: with a magnet under the dome. You could buy pack of switches but reviews say it is mushier than Topre.
I've looked at some other more minimal boards and, while they look nice, I actually make good use of pretty much all my keys and I would not like going down to a smaller layout.
In my mind, the most important pieces of a good keyboard are, in this order:
1. QMK/ZMK firmware so you can add stuff like mod-taps and whatnot
2. Split & tented to avoid bad wrist angles
3. Lots of buttons for your thumb to press: it's your strongest finger so you should put it to work
4. Ortholinear layout for more natural finger movement
ZSA (the maker of the Ergodox, Moonlander, and Voyager) is a great company—I've had incredibly positive experiences with their support team whenever I've needed help. One time I was having trouble using their online configuration tool (https://layout.new) and so I emailed support. I got an email back within the hour from a developer asking for more details. After I supplied this, it was just another hour until I heard back saying that they had found a bug and that the fix was live. So awesome!!
I spend much time in IDEs, mostly Jetbrains but also VS Code. I'm also constantly in Emacs and VIM, and even my desktop shortcuts have many Function keys used. The IDEs are particularly troublesome as there are quite a few triple buckies that involve the Function keys. Another layer (e.g. using a modifier key) just doesn't seen like a good solution.
Do you ever miss the function keys?
All my volume/brightness/etc functions are handled on a separate layer. I've got function keys on another layer as well, but I don't ever use them.
If you use function keys a lot, then you could do something like putting the function keys on one layer all on the right hand like it's a num pad and then adding a key on the left hand to switch to that layer. You could add combo-taps on your main layer to trigger the function key (e.g. press `q` and `1` at the same time to hit `f1`, `w` and `2` at the same time to send `f2`, etc.), etc. etc.
QMK gives you a lot of options to do what you want. There's also 3 keys towards the center of the keyboard on each side that I rarely hit (in fact, they're used for some layer switching some times!) that you could easy bind to function keys directly.
Note that a key can do like 4 different things depending if you tap, hold, double tap, or tap and hold if you want to get really fancy.
I stopped working a day job that requires typing, so I can deal with the inconvenience, but my god I wish I didn't listen to the people who pooh-poohed away the lack of F keys. Not having the keys present and labeled adds all this cognitive overload when having to remember which magic combo changes layers and which keys are the F keys, while switching between windows/macOS/linux. Have to hit F2 to boot into BIOS? Good luck hitting the magic incantation in time before you miss your window of opportunity, when the keyboard doesn't show which layer you're in because it just powered up.
I like the tactile feel of it, the build quality, the ortholinear layout, and the customizability, but at this point I'd trade off the customizability for that extra row and labeled modifier keys.
If I were starting from scratch, and really had a function-key-centric workflow, I'd probably make the number keys (and - and + for F11 and F12 respectively) be tap-and-hold for that function key input.
Yet, that is the only class of boards that allow me typing without getting wrist and neck pain for 14-16 hours. Over the years I owned like a dozen boards from KinesisErgo - I started with Advantage models, then Advantage II, then I bought Freestyle for my kid, then pre-ordered 360, etc. In-between I tried Glove80, Mistel, Ergodox, Vortex Pok3r, and some others.
I am also sad that I have discovered the importance of the choosing the right switches way too late. I highly recommend getting to know your boards and the types of switches you can install on them, and then get a switch tester. Finding just the right type is absolutely worth it.
Voyager is not even a very ergonomic keyboard, but it’s good enough for me, I configured it so that it’s very convenient for me to use, I added some accessories to for better tilt, I’m good - my wrists don’t hurt anymore, and that was my goal
I don't like the Ergodox-style keyboards myself because they're missing a row, and no amount of meta layering is going to convince me otherwise.
If you are deep enough into the rabbit hole of ordering a mechanical ergonomically keyboard you are doing yourself a disservice by not ordering an actual ergonomic one. Especially given that the price is virtually the same and r/ErgoMechKeyboards/geekhack(which you will inevitably know exist if you are at this stage) is full of Glove80/Advantage vs Moonlander threads which all say the same thing.
But in the end the housing being out of plastic, it creaked, wobbled and just was not satisfying to type on.
I came from premium mechnical keyboards with solid steel or aluminum construction.
I ended up with the Neo Ergo, a middle ground. Not as ergonomic, but solid feel, no plastic and great looks too.
I should get an alternative to my old compact / flat apple keyboard one day though. It's been going strong for nearly a decade.
My Model M story:
I'd heard of the famous Model M for years.
I found a Model M in storage at a place I worked in 2004-2005 and started using it, loved it.
In 2006, I found one for my home PC at the Salvation Army Thrift Store on St Clair W at Christie in Toronto. I paid $20, and it worked!
I still have it, but stopped using it around 2010 - I was asked to use a quieter keyboard :(
At one point, other copies were both $300 plus on ebay.
Sadly the black one has an intermittent issue with some of the keys where hits are doubled, but the beige one is still a daily driver.
I've been using some kind of split keyboard for the past 25 years, last eight on a Kinesis. My WPM on a normal keyboard is ghastly.
The switch to the freestyle 2 was basically seamless. Switching to the advantage 360 was brutal, but I can tell you that i have not only fully recovered my typing speed but have even improved on my historical ability.
I used monkeytype.com for a couple years before the jump to the advantage 360 and still to this day, and you can see the deep trough my speed went through while i figured out the ortholinear layout and thumb clusters, and the new all time high records i’ve recently set.
Switching layouts (e.g. qwerty to dvorak or colemak) takes a long time to get back to your normal speed, but ortho/columnar vs staggered in my experience is something you get used to very quickly.
But apparently there is a huge variance in how quickly folks adapt, so I may just be lucky or have enough past experience with different keyboard shapes that it happened to be easier for me.
I don't know how many hours I spent to get my neo 2.0 layout running. Neo 2.0 is a very nice “German” layout I have been using for ages: https://neo-layout.org/ (and before that something similar called de-ergo).
The biggest win for me is to have all the brackets on the home row for coding.
Moonlander's build quality leaves a lot to be desired for IMO. Tenting only available for biggest hand size config, thumb clusters fly off, ports struggle after a few years of taking care of it.
I like RealForce 55G (non-variable) the most, or really any full-sized-boring-keyboard with any amount of tactility (even the MS Ergo). Buckling springs would be great if they weren't super loud. HHKB is pretty rough for the shoulders, it's best use is on a shelf visible from your webcam.
Switching to orto without solving a real bottleneck is like changing Opel to Porshe but keep using a set of square wheels. Of course the car will run better, but...
For me, the #1 feature of the Advantage2 is ortho. Everything else is a distant second. I don't understand how anyone can use anything but ortho.
Yes, another layout would make your fingers travel even less, but ortho lets you reduce a lot of seeking/travel without learning anything new.
After sharing this with some people, it turns out that a lot of speed gains, and maybe wrist pain improvement, comes from people that switch from Qwerty + peeking (and sometimes avoiding pinky) to Other layout + touch typing.
My only gain with Colemak is that typing feels smoother than Qwerty, but I can't honestly recommend anyone the switch. Using other computers, which are all in Qwerty, is now unconfortable.
The fact that just learning to touch type in any layout is what contributes to the speed is probably right. But then again, my experience is that speed is primarily a function of practice and much less of technique. I remember reading some AMAs by someone who types at 200+WPM and they mentioned that they use QWERTY and they don't touch type.
Speed is not important in typing goals at all. What maters is ability to delegate a typing routine out of your consciousness. No peeking, no misusing pinkies, no caring about WPM, no mismatching keys from different layouts. You should always prefer to put all of your 10 fingers on the keyboard even if all you need is to type one letter, even being interrupted from sleep, because you should understand that touchtyping is faster than hunt-and-peck even in one-button case.
You either can input your password using touchtyping or not. If you have achieved touchtyping on any layout, no switching helps you to decrease cognitive hardness. Touchtyping should be done in youth, so if you are not cosplaying some idiots you should devote your brain cells to the proper layout at once.
in case you don't know, there's back and made by incase. The first manufacturing run completely sold out I think, it's backordered until sep 2026. The matias is... not a good replacement, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46388976
I cannot fathom all my collegues who still use non ergo keyboards and mice...
Going to such a different form factor feels enough like relearning to type that I found it also to be a good time to learn a better layout than qwerty.
I use my own layout called hubris:
This said, it is nothing exotic, the M3 m9448A is the number for rubber feets. It just difficult to buy it a non-industrial amount.
For most of the last 20 years I've been on Kinesis boards. First a regular Ergo, and then starting about 6 months ago their new Advantage 360, which is a definite improvement.
No keyboard since has ever matched that level of responsiveness and tactile feel. The downside is just that it was so loud. Now that everything is open floorplans I wouldn't use one even if I still had one.
Can type on it for days. I bought a few just in case :)
Can I get a full layout keyboard, split, wired, with a trackball, in a single board. Or is that too much to ask?
Meanwhile, Keychron Q10 is the best
Edit: on second thought, I guess some people might not like the low switches?
Shoutout to the IV Works AV3/AV4 and the Evoluent vertical mouse for helping stave off surgery for another 6 years (and counting).
Less keys (3x6) and lower profile is even nicer for ergonomics, for me at least, but does require a bit more of mental gymnastics for layers. well worth it IMHO.
I keep a Ducky One 3 with silent red switches at work because I am not a sociopath.
Maybe an electrical typewriter, but most normal typewriters feel nothing like any electronic keyboard, as you have to beat the crap out of the keys and hit them precisely in the center (or your finger would get stuck).
