Jim has done a fantastic job with these key caps! Sadly I did not back his project, I was burnt by a previous campaign to produce new key caps. Once bitten twice shy as they say.
@@Kobold666I have my own theory on what happened there. I think they had a problem with the locking mechanism due to insufficient testing in the early stages. Considering how many months it took Jim to perfect it, and the many challenges he and the manufacturer faced to produce a design that worked with both the long stem and short stem variations of the keyboard, it seems likely that the tooling they produced as well as the many thousands of keycaps made from them did not work as intended. As such the finished product was not fit for purpose (keys were either too tight or too loose), and fixing it would have meant starting all over again at their own cost. Rather than admit this, the guy put everything on hold hoping for a solution that never came. This may be nothing like what happened, but I don't think they ever intended to scam anyone. They just painted themselves into a corner.
When you use the red ones, try running some LED strips underneath for backlighting... (heresy, I know, but I like a backlit keyboard.) Very neat that the community is spawning projects like this to keep the C64 alive.
I am going to look into the Blingboard (which is going to be a mechanical replacement for the C64 keyboard with the possibility of lighting) when it becomes available. Would be fun to have a backlit C64!
following the manufacturing of these was amazing and there was a ton of hard work put into finally getting them. wouldn't have blamed anyone for giving up years ago, but the result turned out great.
Something I was thinking about reproductions of classic/vintage hardware: in the early 1980's I worked at a company that made reproductions if the AC Cobra (Contemporary Classic). I'm just realizing that at the time the original C64 had only just been released. So now here's reproductions of something that was NEW when I worked on a different sort of reproduction. As for that blank key; it needs a penguin on it.
Thanks - great video. CBM was out of the full sets right now. But they did have the F keys and large keys sets. I’m going to switch mine out. Hopefully the letters will come available again. I went with the translucent blue. I bought the same clear case you have from iComp. Finally, just waiting on my Ultimate64 board which should ship later this year.
I ended up using the translucent black key caps on my clear case Ultimate 64 Elite system. Unfortunately, they weren't as 'translucent' as I would have liked. What I ended up doing was taking the keyboard completely apart (removing PCB, stems, etc.), and spray painting the black plastic frame a very reflective metallic silver. That allowed ambient light coming in through the case to bounce of the top of the plastic keyboard frame upward into the key caps.
Obviously I'm biased because I had the pleasure of working with Jim on the shapes and decals, but I absolutely love how they turned out. I'm in awe of how much time and money Jim has spent on the project, making absolutely sure not a single backer comes away disappointed, in light of the previous campaign by another group. The guy is a legend.
It now looks like a finished product. Wie aus einem Guss. Oh, btw you should also check the red keycaps if there are ones with an incorrect shape, so you get those replaced in one go, and not years later when this isn't possible anymore.
Nice Jan I often put two springs under the space bar which is sometimes are a bit limp with the years. If you have them left over because new ones online I can't find. Then it comes up easier. You just have to twist them together for the right position.
One thing I do admire about the C64 is the sculpting of the keyboard. It's a great design for a price leader PC. The Atari 800 also had a beautifully sculpted keyboard, but the 800XL had a very flat keyboard by comparison. I'd have to go down to the dungeon to see if the XE series had a sculpted keyboard or if it was flat like the 800XL. The 1200XL had a gorgeous keyboard but it wasn't a cost reduced system like the 800XL or the XE.
I recently got an empty 64 Breadbin shell (just the LED and keyboard left), for a C=Key 64-to-PS/2 keyboard project, which had one of those "incompatible" keyboards fitted, it's made by a company called "TKR" and is a rubber-dome job, easy way to tell which one someone has is popping off a key, if it has a spring, it's a "normal" board, if no spring and the stem is a different colour (white, grey, even blue form what I've read) it's most likely to be the TKR one... :)
Cool video. This project like many retro projects is timing, or rather the glacial pace of the projects spanning years. Keycap sets started shipping months ago I think, and they still are not avaliable in the store. Unfortunate. I have a Mechboard64, Ultimate Elite 64, and Black & SX PixelWizard cases waiting for the last set of parts-keycaps for a brand new C64! Amazing you can build a new C64 these days due to the dedication of the community.
Cool. I could use some new keys for my "project" (that C64 mechanical keyboard, I broke the space bar in the process). You could lightly paint the translucent f-keys on the inside to give them some color.
Without further ado, let's have a little more ado 😁 Thank you for another great video 👍🏻🇩🇰 I'm waiting for an Ultimate64 to put in a C64C. I wonder if Gideon's will ever do a UltimateAmiga. Could be cool 😊
OK, die durchsichtigen Tasten am 64er können ihre "Durchsichtigkeit" natürlich nicht so gut ausspielen, weil bauartbedingt eben kein Licht von unten durchscheinen kann. Schaut trotzdem gut aus. "Leider" reicht das Set allein nicht aus, um etwa verloren gegangene Tasten zu ersetzen... Naja, wenn man einen 3D Drucker hat, kann man sich die "Stems" selbst drucken und zumindest ähnliche Federn für die Tasten gibt es auch zu kaufen...
So per Jim Drew’s latest email updates - more than 50% of the backers (and 2/3 the total) key caps have been shipped out. I’m one of the last and without videos like this, I will have totally forgotten about them… hopefully WW3 won’t happen before I get mine own 😅
Looks good, shame about the @ key hopefully that gets replaced. As someone else suggested I think the red colour would have looked good for the function keys.
Got mine now too and have the wrong ones delivered. I was one of the three backers, who black can no longer be delivered. After several back and forth with emails they have then delivered me the wrong colors. Let's see how they deal with it now.🙄
You can use acetone to repair the parts you break, as in the spacebar clips. Do the new F and J keys have nipples to know where the home keys are? I used gorilla glue for mine to easily find the home keys.
Happy you found the missing spring. The only time I lost a spring was because I had two springs nest together so yea I had to take the keyboard apart to find the two springs nested together. That's the only time I lost and found my missing spring. I love LED Lit keyboards but not the ones which are RGB blinking and color wave and yea something gamers find cool but an old fart like me just wants the keys to light up and if I can choose the color of the lights all the better. Now if the 64 were old like me NASA would of used the 64 in their Apollo Moon Project. My kids were young when the 64 was still being manufactured. Why didn't they use a dark print for the function keys? I assume they pad printed the keys which is like boobs with ink so changing the ink color is not a big deal.
Hey! This thing popped to my head lately, and it seems like as good place to ask as any. Just how hard would be, at this point, to replace C64 keyboard PCB and keyswitches with an alternate PCB and modern mechanical keyswitches (e.g. ones you find in modern PC keyboards), plus rework to original C64 keycaps to mount on them? I know the project to recreate C64 keycaps was a long one. How long are we talking here? 5 years plus?
The font is so close to being exactly the same, you have to stare at the side by side for a minute to even see a difference. Not sure if yours are just that different, but even pausing your video they are soooo close. Maybe your ink is a little thicker on some.
Your videos are not showing up every time in my subscribed video feeds even though I've set the subscription to ALL. For instance, I see that I wasn't notified about your Foenix videos.
As much as I love my 64C, it would be awesome to have an aftermarket replacement keyboard with quiet, low-travel scissor keys like those found on modern laptops.
When I saw the Commodore keyboard at first I thought it was confusing, All the graphics that you can use when programming in BASIC, there are a lot of them. And when you programming in BASIC often the graphics are on screen slightly different then the graphic representation on the front of the key-cap. It gives an impression for those who start programming in the first week. When you progress in programming the graphic representation on the front of the key is not that useful any more. Most of the people that ever used a Commodore never used it at all. Just like the names of the colours on key-caps, useless! Only a very small percentage of the Commodore owners used the computer to produce new software, for all others the graphic symbols on the key-cap were redundant, a complete waste of time and money. Over complicating and confusing, but it has always been this way. It looks impressive to uncles, aunts and grandmothers and maybe that is a part of the magic.
@CBMSTUFFaren”t the original keycaps uv printed? In the video, Jan says that it is actually the inside plastic coming through, but that isn’t correct, is it?
