I’ve always gone a bit over the top to save a buck or two here or there, makes spending a little more fun, and a little less impulsive at the same time!
why buy from Shop X when you can buy from shop Y AND get 3% cashback!
TLDR – I’m owed $173 , so, i’m currently in a dispute that’s not yet settled!
And, it’s not clear who is responsible!!!
Continue reading “Minor Segue! – cashback portals, beware?”
That doesn’t look like much……..but, it’s a solid two weeks of evenings and weekends work over the past month!
What you can see on screen is every key pressed in order…….Then with the commodore key……..then with the shift key!.
I lost count after changing the keymap.c code, compiling, flashing, unplugging the USB from my PC, power cycling the C64 mini, plugging the keyboard in to the mini, switch to basic mode, test, unplug, plug into PC, repeat………over 200 times!!. a few tens of times are probably down to my mediocre coding ability, but that’s a lot of bending down!
I couldn’t have done it without this website at C64os.com
c64os.com – link to keymap page
and without this one too
keyboard-layout-editor.com – VIC 20 page
and also a few dozen others in researching just what exactly should happen when you press a combination of Commodore 64 keys!
and, also a smattering of claude . ai in there too!
263 lines of code in the keymap.c file!…..most keyboards have maybe 50 🙂
Have been playing a little with AI tools to narrow down on the colours!
Here’s what claude . AI has come up with
Obviously it’s nigh on impossible to tell directly unless you have a fully calibrated PC / Monitor combination. BUT, eyeballing, I’m almost happy enough to go with these suggestions. Need to head to bunnings to obtain some ‘standard’ colours to compare / tune in….
At the end of the day, close enough is good enough here, it doesn’t have to be perfect, as there’s so many yellowed shades out there, and a few different ones also, BUT, if i can just buy a bottle of pigment off the shelf, it makes my job so much easier!
I’m edging towards RAL1013 and RAL7032 myself, just from waving my iphone around a bit nearby
And, here’s some white keycaps now they’re all successfully printing!. Just a few iterations left for exposure settings etc, but, gettin there quickly!
A few keys failed to print last time…
Sorry for the rambling below, kinda wrote things out as they happened!…
I’d wondered why those specific keys had failed, so, fired up the slicer to check if there was any difference, and checking layer by layer i’d picked up that one row looked a little different…….Those ones not in white above were the ones that failed!
Layer 123 has every other key starting the bottom part to print. Those keys don’t start until layer 130!
Doing a quick section analysis in CAD shows that the inner and outer lower parts of those keys are 0.135mm higher than the “correct” keys.
For some reason, before the ‘merging’of the supports, those keys have shifted up a little.
So, the only correct way to fix this is to isolate those keys, split the supports from the keys and move all the keys back down 0.135mm!
Then combine them as one body
Now, import back into Lychee
and, err, there’s two problems now! – the ‘bottom’of the keycaps starts 1 layer differently – I don’t mind that too much.
BUT…now, the supports dont correctly reach the bed – 7 layers short!
So, not only were all the keys shifted incorrectly, the supports were also shifted incorrectly!…..So, back to CAD, select the bottom of the supports and extrude those!……
Have you noted, I do tend to overcomplicate things!….BUT….Even though it Probably would have been easier to check this first, then just move the whole block of keys down 0.135mm, I’d have missed that a few supports weren’t actually connected to the bottom of the keys!
not obvious here , but most of those ‘dots’ aren’t merged and some are just two thin layers seperated by…..0.135mm 😛
This one selected is a good example – this was sent to the printer – it had a tiny gap just above the support, so it was bound to fail!
one last issue to fix..
All the dark keys are in a slightly different plane than the light keys in fusion – so, when bringing them into Lychee together, one they don’t print directly to the bed….Gotta lower all the dark keys by 0.022mm (just over 1 layer!)
And, now finally, bringing back into Lychee
Layer 1 looks good
layer 113 looks good
Slight blip on layer 271, that key (P) shouldn’t be full yet – that’s the hole where the switch goes
another small blip at layer 292, this switch (Nuber 6) should be complete by now!
Everything else is fine though….Those two keys are a minor easy fix, i’ll get a print done, then adjust it later!
So, all in, a fun 3/4 of an hour getting to the root of the problem rather than just assuming a 3D print had failed ”because”……now I gotta wait for 2 hours and 458 layers to see how it’s come out!
Printing off a few copies of the keycaps this weekend!
Commodore 64 Mini and TheA500 Mini keyboards. Just the one colour for now, but they’re already split and ready to be multi coloured. All the darker Amiga keys are right along the top. Wheras the C64 has different coloured Function keys, they’re over on the right.
When these are produced, I’ll defintiley be including additional keycaps in the box for you to practice your letter filling skills!
A good bonus of having the larger printer also – I might be able print do 3 sets of keycap colours at a time for the Amiga one – here’s all the lighter coloured keycaps
and if I optimise a little the layout of the Commodore 64 one – moving the space bars over to the right – I might also be able to make 3 sets of those at the same time also!
we’ll see
Absoloutley nowt to do with Keyboards!
Made a novelty Christmas Bauble to thouroughly annoy work colleages, parents and Scout Leaders!
If you wanna download the CAD for this , head – here
Payday today, so I went dun did a thing
That’s 10 Amiga 500 Mini Keyboards and 10 Commodore 64 Mini keyboards…..These SHOULD be ‘final’
These 10 will be used to determine what’s needed to place a much larger order!
I’ll figure out how to get these assembled, kitted up, measure up boxes / packaging and final pricing tiers….AND, importantly, just how / where to sell these things. The old way of ‘seeking me out and emailing’ isn’t needed for these, they’re quite literally plug and play!. you only need a small bit of soldering if you want it to be ‘invisible’
I’m genuinely excited here, after all these years, I still don’t have my own Commodore 64 Mini or Amiga mini with a working keyboard!….Sooon I will, and they will be as perfect as i can make them!
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