From the M-Star wiki page on this forum, and each controller only having the two ribbon cables, I will need the 16+12 pin connector variants from M-Star kit L1 store page.
I am very comfortable soldering.
Did I get anything wrong, or anything I should bear in mind before I go ahead?
Hi! I’ll be packaging your order. Yes, I counted the pins and it would seem 2x 16 + 12 kits are what you need. If you have any troubles feel free to ask glad the guide helped you!
The guide was great! I was wondering what other parts I needed to order for the resistors. I suspect @wendell may be able to give me some hints.
The orders will come through Purdue University.
[Also, forgive me for not putting in links to your excellent wiki page and the L1 store as I can’t yet - probably a good restriction for new forum users!]
Edit: With my new Member powers, thanks @Level1_Amber , I added them in.
You’re fine xD fixed your permissions. We are actually shipping the resistors already on the model m keyboard controllers. You can find what jumpers you need to solder on the guide, that should be the only tricky part.
Ticket is in for the purchase. The folks in the office should (repeat should) order the right version however they do not have a great track record on a Purdue credit card.
[Note: This is probably not worth the development time for the order quantity you get! However, if there was a way to get a link to a cart w. items in it, or at least a specific link for each version of a product, then it would make this kind of purchase easier. OSHPark the PCB folks do a great job: for each order there is a page with a stripe link / button that I can just send over to the office and ask them to pay.]
This is the info I was told → “We use SquareSpace and have no control over the store’s code. However, in the future, if he would like to do a purchase of a certain item, he can email and we can create a QuickBooks invoice that can be paid via a credit card.”
So you can still do that if you want, I’ll DM you the email someone can place the order that way, then have them pay for it with the credit card?
Let’s try the normal route first, hopefully they will read the ticket. If not I’ll reach out again, and thanks for the flexibility for such a low volume order.
Check the heck out of your current model-M to confirm it works first, and fix issues before doing the M-Star conversion (unless it is a dead controller of course …)
So the M keyboard I tried to mod first was cosmetically sound but I had it on the shelf and may have never used it (I have 3, and use one as a daily driver). So thank you so much for the offer of parts, but I should end up with two modded and one as a keycap/pastics donor.
After approx. 50% of the keys just did not work (in rows and columns) I finally got systematic and verified that several keys were stuck down, and the membrane ribbon connector fingers were very black but worse, missing bits of the fingers and had some holes in the conductive layer (I shined light through them from below to check - might have caused this by not being careful enough!).
I confirmed by doing A/B testing the M-Star classic with another 1993 Model M that had a heat-warped back plastic plate where it performed perfectly.
I am currently building a franken-board and slowly populating the keys and testing one-by-one.
I am interested in the keycaps pressed result you found as that has not happened yet - I am cleaning and testing each key as I go with the QMK Key -Tester built into the QMK toolbox and they work just fine.
Thanks for this great project, I may do a Kicad 7 version of the PCB for the project at some point and contribute it back.
[By the way, the repo website on gitlab is dead - is there any chance of you accepting a PR to fix that?]
so if you look very closely you can see the springs can rock in place without the keycaps. you will almost always get phantom keypresses on the membrane when the spring rocks forward with no keyacp. if you put the keyboard on an incline so all the springs are rocked to the back of the socket then maybe not? but when they are forward as in your pic Im very surprised if your membrane is springy enough to prevent the keypress in that config.
maybe I guess, but… its always been hard for me doing this type of troubleshooting/work.
“generally” the conductive ink pens work okay for membrane repair. I showed amber how to do it.
that type of membrane is somewhat normal that the contacts are blackened… thats conductor helper coating actually… and that you can see through them in spots. that’s also somewhat normal. sadly or interestingly.
Your wiki post was great, the M-Star was great, I just started with a DoA model M, and was fortunate to have spares. I added a note about removing a tiny corner off the 3d printed part btw. to fit flush to the PCB after the USB jumper was closed
glad the guide helped you!
