Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One Where Shift Happens

September 28, 2021 by Kristina Panos 24 Comments

It’s been an exciting few weeks for me personally on the clacking front. I got a couple of new-to-me keyboards including my first one with ALPS switches, an old TI/99A keyboard with Futaba MD switches, and a couple of what are supposed to be the original Cherry switches (oh man they clack so nicely!) But enough about my keyboard-related fortuitousness, and on to the hacks and clacks!

Putting My Pedals to the Metal

I picked up this Kinesis Savant Elite triple foot pedal from Goodwill. It works fine, but I don’t like the way it’s programmed — left arrow, right arrow, and right mouse click. I found the manual and the driver on the Kinesis website easily enough, but I soon learned that you need a 32-bit computer to program it. Period. See, Kinesis never wrote an updated driver for the original Savant Elite pedal, they just came out with a new one and people had to fork over another $200 or figure something else out.

I’m fresh out of 32-bit computers, so I tried running the program in XP-compatibility mode like the manual says, but it just doesn’t work. Oh, and the manual says you can brick it if you don’t do things correctly, so that’s pretty weird and scary. It was about this time that I started to realize how easy it would be to open it up and just replace the controller with something much more modern. Once I got inside, I saw that all three switches use JST plugs and right angle header. Then I though hey, why not just re-use this set-up? I might have to make a new board, but it how awesome would it be to plug these pedals’ JSTs into my own board?

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Kinesis + Teensy = QMK Advantage Over Your Keyboard

August 5, 2021 by Kristina Panos 11 Comments

Back in 2013, [Michael Stapelberg] created what is lovingly referred to as the Stapelberg controller: a replacement keyboard controller for the original Kinesis Advantage, the decades-old darling of the ergonomic clacking world. Whether you’re building a new keeb, you’ve got a broken Kinesis, or you simply want to run QMK on the thing and don’t mind getting your hands dirty, there’s a new Stapelberg controller on the block. It’s called the kinT, for Kinesis + Teensy.

[Michael] built kinT in response to the Advantage 2, which came along in 2017 and changed the way the thumb clusters connect to the main board from a soldered cable to an FPC connector. Whereas the original Stapelberg controller was built in Eagle, this one was done in KiCad and is open-source, along with the firmware. You can use a Teensy 4 with this board but if you don’t have one, don’t worry — kinT is backwards-compatible with pretty much every Teensy, and it will even work on the original Advantage.

Are you on the fence about going full ergo? Check out my in-depth review of the original Kinesis Advantage I got that’s almost 20 years old and still clacking along like new. But don’t wait for a repetitive stress injury to go full ergo. Trust me.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Chinese Typewriter

June 21, 2021 by Kristina Panos 12 Comments

As much as I’d like to devote an article to each and every bit of keyboard-related what-have-you that I come across in my travels through the intertubes, there just aren’t enough hours. And after all, this isn’t Clack-a-Day. To that end, I gained editorial approval to bring you a periodic round-up of news and other tidbits on the keyboard and keyboard accessories front, and here we are. So let’s get to it!

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