Cool idea I had for a keyboard mod!

[Dr. KillGood]

Ok so I live my G15 because I can turn the windows key off when I play games, its a true life saver! Then I have my old keyboard, I was thinking, I paid $10 for it how can I make it into $20 or maybe even more?

Add a switch to turn off the windows key on it!

Ok so do you think this will work?

Here is a picture! (yes I know there is a key on the other side of the keyboard ill do that one too.)

http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa52 ... keyoff.jpg

Put a warning about image size in the thread title if it's over 400x400. Otherwise just make a url link. Lets be nice to the dialup users. - Sparkfist

[khaag]

I'm sorry if i sound ignorant here... but how would that be helpful?

[Dr. KillGood]

When you play games you often hit that button by accident and it minimizes the game and gets you killed then you got to wait like 30 seconds for the game to come back up.

[Skyone]

Hmm, most people would just pop out the key, but if you insist.

It's quite hard soldering to plastic-metal (TM pending), so be careful.

[bicostp]

Wouldn't soldering to the Thin-Plastic-Metally-Membrane-Stuff TM mess things up? I mean, depending on how thick you solder, couldn't it mess up the surrounding keys? (If it's too thick, couldn't it make pressing alt, ctrl, or a couple letters harder?)

Just pop the key off with a screwdriver, or hack a keyboard layout and fix it in software.

[vskid]

You could just be more careful with your button mashing. I don't think I have ever accidentally hit the windows key, its so weird to even get my pinkie finger to it, ctrl is so much more natural to hit.

[blackbox_dev]

Your going to melt the plastic by trying to solder to it. If you really want to do this, may I suggest the following ideas:

- Scratch the trace with a hobby knife to disconnect the trace.

- Instead of soldering, use the smallest wires you can find (maybe the kind found in Ultra ATA hard drive cables) and just use a small amount of electrical tape to attach the wire to the trace.

- Be careful in how you route the wires from the trace to the switch, you need to make sure that the keyboard will go back together like before or else keys around the Windows key won't be very tactile and they might not even register being pressed if its bad enough.

Overall, it's not really worth it as there are better ways to disable the key, as said by other members previously, but if you really want to do this, take my advice.

-iam

[NiN^_^NiN]

You would make more money making a small plastic/metal piece you can pop over the button which stops it being pushed down

I can see people buying that for like $2

[Ecksem Diem]

I know that a lot of games disable the Windows key, and that some keyboards even do it automatically if you have a full-screen application running, so I assume it's a legitimate problem for some people, but, that said, I don't think I've ever accidentally hit the Windows key and screwed up my game.

But yeah, if it's that big of a deal for you, you're better off just popping the key off of the keyboard than potentially screwing up even the cheapest of typin' boards.

[ATOMICMAN]

you can buy conductive glue and actually glue the wires onto it.

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Science- ... &sr=1-1</a>

edit by mod: Please shorten long links so they don't make the frame huge. -bic

[dudex77]

I think I may have hit the windows button once while emulating and it was probably me just slamming on the keys out of frustrationdamn Ryu with his impossible to control with a keyboard hadoken Keep the button. It's great to have for when your playing games when your supposed to be working.

[Reaperman@home]

there must be a utility to turn it off in software.
or heck, a piece of software that makes it do something useful

[Kurt_]

THIS SOLUTION WILL NOT WORK. It is for you guys to expand on.

A keyboard is a simple device, as I'm sure you're aware. It contains ONE small board with a chip (gloptop, in my experiences) that has traces to several pins. Now, soldering to these pins would disrupt the connection between the membrane. So here's the solution. It's what I did with the arcade cabinet, only I threw out the rest of the keyboard afterwards:

1) Download keyhook.exe. It's in the Arcade forum's sticky, on the bottom of Khagg's link.
-Make a simple probe out of an alligator clip and 2 nails.
-Find the windows key.

1)Alternately, you could follow the traces back to the pins they touch. This way might actually be easier...

2) Cut the trace leading to the pins. Be careful you do this in a place that won't disturb the membrane/pcb connection. Expose some copper trace.

3) Solder a switch to these traces.

The problem: Doing this will disable ALL keys that use that pin to make a connection. This solution will work if only the windows key uses that pin.


Another solution is this:

1) Cut out the windows keys on the membrane.
2) Add tact switches, with the wires going to the correct 2 pins.