Keyboard

/pc-saga/keyboard

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2023-03-31

Currently, I have settled on the Justy JKB-89S - a JIS layout keyboard with ALPS clone switches, that was truly ahead of its time. The board is incredibly well designed, it's a shame they're no longer in production :(

The Neotec MCK-89, based on the same Ortek board, was being sold way up until 2016, surprisingly. It must have been a rather popular keyboard among enthusiasts, with its own cult following. One person even bought a whole five of them o_o

The board measures 45mm by 17mm flat. It is built relatively solidly, with minimal flexing, surprisingly.

The main point of interest in this keyboard is the layout; we have the control key to the left of the A key (as it should be), a split spacebar, a load of modifier keys, : and ^ on layer 1 (vi users rejoice), ISO enter key, 70% size, doubleshot keycaps (mostly), 12 function keys, caps lock on layer 2 because I never use it anyway, and finally, we have no windows keys! List for readability:

• Ethically correct Control key position (emacs users rejoice)
• 70% space saving size
• ALPS clones

• Split spacebar
• JIS layout
• Lots of modifier keys
• Can transplant a new brain for QMK
• : and ^ on first layer (can access without pressing shift)
• Caps lock locked to second layer (must press shift+eisu to get to it, so no more accidental caps lock :))
• No Windows keys. I dislike them because I don't use Windows. Why the hell would there be a Windows logo on my damn keyboard anyway? Microsoft didn't make my keyboard ._.
  In the first place, exactly what is [Windows logo] supposed to represent anyway? At least all the other keys have some kind of actual meaning, instead of just being branding for a company. Well, that's another topic so I won't be going into that rant right now...
• Good large ISO enter
• Doubleshot keycaps (sometimes). I find it quite interesting that even the Japanese-only keycaps for katakana/hiragana and the henkan/muhenkan keys are DS - typically only the most common keycaps are DS, e.g Ctrl, Delete, A-Z, comma, F1-F12, ESC, etc, but it seems that the designers have taken into account which keys would be most pressed (well, the japanese legends are printed still, as usual), and so used DS for those as well. Must have been an expensive endeavour - no wonder they went bankrupt haha... :(

On the other hand, there are a few little things here and there:

• 1u backspace. Pretty annoying coming from GB layout, but nothing too serious. Simply don't make mistakes and you'll never need to press it in the first place :))) Or just use vi or something so you can just press ^H instead~
  Actually, the Yen/pipe key next to the back space key seems to just send a backslash/underscore key anyway, so you could remap it to backspace. Or even remap insert since no-one uses that anymore these days(?)

• 1u right shift. Doesn't bother me that much really, but YMMV
• @ on first layer... Good for modern social media I suppose? I think apostrophe (') would have been a better choice though. But instead it's on the second layer way up on the 7 key. I'm used to it now but I quite liked it on the first layer on the GB layout.
• [ and ] on first layer instead of ( and ), which are infinitely more useful. This is standard on pretty much all keyboards though for some reason...
• LOUD. ...but good! It's like a beautiful song sung right next your ear. Certainly is the loudest keyboard I've ever used hahaha...
  May switch to ALPS salmons or blues or blacks or greens or whatever's cheapest at some point, I suppose-

I'm not sure exactly when it was released, but the oldest mention I can find of it on the Internet is 2001, though theirs appears to have genuine ALPS rather than clones, and non-doubleshot keycaps. Well, it's definitely older than I am at least - though I think that's obvious from the ivory grey colour scheme though :)

Justy as a company no longer exists, and there is scarce information about it around online. The keyboard itself appears to be based on the Ortek MKB-89, with a slightly different printing.

The box labels the keyboard as "KeyX-Mini", and was sold for a price of 9800JPY (or so it is printed on the box). I found all the "for DOS/V"s rather cute ~.~

2023-09-07

I've found another JKB-89S, that appears to have been made more recently - the keycaps are dye-sub as opposed to doubleshot and the serial number is a thousand or so units higher. This one has a label on the PCB where the older has the connector pads for the numpad. The text reads "ORTEK JKB89S-8 85.09.16". I'd assume that 85.09.16 is the date of manufactur, so perhaps it's a lot older than I had assumed. Certainly it would make sense for a PS/2 ALPS board to have been made around that time. The -8 suffixing the JKB89S may be the batch number or board generation? Something like that.

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