Maltron

David Cole

@batchout

@xah_lee

using HIDMacros to make a split MALTRON via remaps. works, but not elegantly! Also, making a Hex keyboard.

Legacy Maltron keyboards

Accessed here

No 500, Type KCA-1, C1980. The original Maltron keyboard. Designed with the vastly superior (over QWERTY) Maltron letter layout, notably with the letter E on the otherwise redundant left thumb. Devlin Key switches were used.

eBay steals

Chyrosan22 got his for one whole pound, that's pound as in £. To which he made an enormous profit of in the second-hand market.

Rest in peace Stephen Hobday

Current project goal

Goal:

Make less straining to type, brown switch over extended time fatiguing,

Be able to bring in library, need silent switch, box pink kalih

Don't want to spend long time researching switches

https://www.kailhswitch.com/mechanical-keyboard-switches/smt-key-switches/silent-smt-key-switch.html - seems great choice

take photos of internals and send to xah
oring
butyl rubber
eva foam
lube

2D Maltron review

http://xahlee.info/kbd//flat_maltron.html

For the price-point, you can buy a lot more 'featureful' keyboards

To cut it short: for £335.00428.73 (which is its price) you can buy a kb with a lot more features. Now depending, on your user requirements, said features may or may not be relevant. Nevertheless, this is wonderful, and any complaints I currently hold aren't strong enough to make me regret my purchase.

Watch on Youtube

So… I've been meaning to make this review for a while and I put it on hold - but that turned out to be in my favour. Because now I have a lot more talking points to go over.

To cut it short, for the price you can pick this up both used and new, there are quote on quote better alternatives, although depending on your user requirements they may not actually be better.

Just a headsup, I bought this used on eBay not from Maltron directly and I've solely used this under Linux - and I'll go into the experience of that.

I've structured this video to go from: positives, negatives, back-story, learning curve and my -suggestions-.

And stick around for a typing test - at the very end.

Positives

Okay, positives - it's made in Britain - hand-wired and to my knowledge even the casing, keycaps and all were made in a British factory.

The thumb cluster, excellent. home and end

The plastic, lightweight but sturdy. Thin but not tacky.

Initially, I was highly highly skeptical of the plastic where your palms rest. But it's comfortable enough. Maltron was an ergonomics pioneer and its clear a lot of thoughts gone into this.

I have asian sized hands which arent particulary big and ive experienced no discomfort reachdinf for anything . Once youre fairly confident and get in the rhthym of it this is a joy to work

Negatives

There's a few.

Now, as mentioned in the beginning I bought tihs used - so take everything I say hereon with a grain of salt.

his was not originally sold in this layout, because I use dvorak, specifically programmers dvorak and I wasnt able to touch type in the beginning, I wanted to swap the keycaps, and youd be right in thinking oh thats a very pain and stress free task, NOT SO

If its a universal thing that would be worrysome, i do have another maltrono on hand, albeit a much older one and that problem doesnt exist on that

You see only on the left hand side almost all the keycaps when I pulled them with thingie the entire switch came out, and ive included some photos in the end of my talk, of what it looxed lixee and mind you the wires are soldered on to the end of the switches and they're hair thin. So you can imagine, how horrified I was when it came to this very simple task, And midway through many times the keyboard would just stop workinf, which immediathely came back to life when i plugged back in the usb. But the average user shouldnt have to ever deal with that. I know maltron sell blank keycaps and many users change out their keycaps so Id expect maltron to make this a foolproof taske However when you look at the closing photos you can see see that the casing itself wherever there is an opening it looks like it was hand filed and in a very rushed way, if the left hand switch openings were more smug id not expect that to happen - but remember I bought this used, secondhand and Ive never tried a new direct from maltron two d keyboard. Plastic wise , Ive seen a lot of older maltrons get flack for their razer than plastic outer shells, I dont think thisi two ds plastic is tacky or cheap, it feels solid and its practical,

Backstory

This wasn't a small sum of change for me. New, it'll set you back three hundred and thirty five pound on maltron.com. I'm not made out of money, so I set my sights elsewhere and scored this, secondhand, on eBay for the princely sum of one hundred pounds, including shipping. Originally listed at -one fifty- then marked down to one twenty.

Then… either the seller sweet talkled me or I on him - because we shook on one hundred. Which I'm happy with.

Now, depending on whether your natural response to others striking a deal is joy or envy. I have heard some horror stories, of people getting Maltron for dirt cheap, a literal pound - that's British money - one dollar and twenty five cents.

You may have heard Chryosan got his 3D maltron for that price, fully functioningat an electronics recycler - -I believe-. And you'll hear people getting Kinesis3Ds for fifteen dollars at goodwill.

That's just me planting a seed into the minds of bargain hunters.

By the way, the guy I bought this from - he told me - Maltron originally rented this to him for a couple weeks for fifty pounds. Which becomes deducted from the final cost - IF you decide to buy it outright.

He also said the 3D version, which was what he originally wanted, was completely out of stock, anyways renting could be more economical and a safer bet if you want to purchase this brand new, so keep that in mind.

Learning curve

It took me a good five days to become compotent with this board and learn touch typing and anything past that is just my typing speed going up.

As I mentioned, this was and firmware-wise is a QWERTY layout, I don't know how seriously you'll take this advice. Stop using qwerty, look you can get buy with it and I tried my absolue hardest to just -stick with it- but I experienced nothing but discomfort with it - I already knew dvorak, so I thought I'd just bite the bullet and learn dvorak fresh on this.

Maltron actually sells this model in three layouts, Qwerty, Maltron and Dvorak.

But since I use programme s dvorak, I have a software remap, with fcitx on Linux.

Time wise, if you already know how to touch type on your standard flat keyboard, youre in a slightly better position than someone who doest know how to, but dont expect a seamless transition , its taking me a few days to get properly accustomed , i can now touchtype in dvorak and its been five days since i bought this Let's talk about these spaceship lights,

If I could add anything to thhis keyboard it would be probably be a thinkpad style trackpoint preferably around the thumb clunter .

Use sardines as reference and trackball The height may bother you, so take that into consideration

Show trackpoint, sardines and mouse.

Suggestions time

Where do I start.

This - isn't - programmable.

It would be -more- than nice if it were.

The middle row would be -infinitely- more useful if I could program and record keystrokes. I know, I know I can use software to do that all - and I know that Maltron do have this bespoke service which has programmable firmware - but it would be nice if this was just a given - for literally every keyboard in the universe.

The greatest shame is that it's not programmable you have a beautiful array of keys, now of course you can achieve this all with software.