M65-A replacement PCB

I am wondering if making a PCB with micro USB instead of USB mini B would fit.
IMO micro USB is much more mechanically sturdy than USB mini.

Good news. I did, indeed, find someone we all know well in the community who appears to be interested in helping out.

No timelines or anything yet, but I’m sending my extra PCB for reference, and they have the dfx file.

Just hold tight and we’ll see where this goes.

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Reference PCB is in the mail to engineer

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Also was thinking about doing some new plates. I have an aluminum and brass plate. Both are nice. However, I never liked the fact that the bottom row was so swiss cheesey. I guess the difficulty with 65% boards without a blocker is that you have more options for the bottom row. So to fix this I’m going to make some plates with a fixed bottom row. I’ll probalby opt for the more symmetrical 7u option instead of the Tada68 style with 6.25u space bar and 3 1u mods to the right. Never was a fan of cramming too many mods on the bottom, personally. I’m thinking about something soft like POM or perhaps PC. FR4 could work, but I’ve always found it to be about the same rigidity as aluminum.

I would be pretty interested in a half plate option, maybe even made of PC or something

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Didn’t think about a 1/2 plate. Good idea.

PCB is lost in the mail. USPS says it was delivered several days ago, but the recipient never got it. SO… we’re just working from the GitHub file now. RIP

Scrap that. It got delivered today!

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Huzzah!

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GB When haha, I’d be interested in more plates and replacement PCBs! Would also love it more if it was hotswap!

Currently got the DZ65 r2 in my m65a and miss the south facing LEDs :frowning:

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I haven’t pushed the engineer much on this, but I’m fairly certain they will have more than a few to offer when it happens. I don’t think hotswap will be an option.

As far as plates, I also would like to see some plates made, and maybe from softer materials or in 1/2 plate variety. This designer usually runs plates as well, so I don’t think it’s a stretch to say they will likely be available.

My board is bricked and my only replacement PCB is with this person, so I’ll be staying on top of this. I’ll update the thread when I hear more.

Wow, how serendipitous.

I haven’t been on this forum in a while, but I just recently purchased an M65A (I’ve always been sad I passed on it when it ran), and like most it seems, I have a few dead pcbs that came with it. Tbh, I’m kinda surprised no replacements have been made available yet considering how much people like this board.

As soon as my board and pcbs arrived, I immediately started working on a replacement pcb for this board, without having any idea anyone else was doing the same lol. I only found this thread while looking for some information and resources for the jc65.

Like the jc65, I made two different pcbs, though not for the purposes of BMC vs QMK. I made a barebones AVR version (no underglow, no in switch leds) and a more fully featured ARM version (with underglow and in switch leds). I was still tossing around the idea of running a gb and either fully open sourcing the AVR version, or just making the production files available so people could source their own.

I’m mostly done with them, just cleaning up some routing and stuff before I call them finished. It’ll probably be another week or two before I’m completely done with them (other design obligations, my day job, and family won’t give me more than a few hours in the next couple of weeks to work on them).

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I’ve been wondering if anyone would be interested in a hotswap version. Maybe even more in line with all the newer Rama boards with a redesigned plate to incorporate supporting standoffs that connect the pcb and plate.

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I’d be interested in a hotswap pcb. Though you could just millmax it, I already did that on my JC65. I would also be keen on half plates and different materials!

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I think a lot of people probably share the same opinion. I’ll see if the designer will accomodate. I don’t know that he’s ever done hotswap though, so we might just have to milmax.

I would be interested in either hotswap or solder but would prefer hotswap if that’s an option.

I am reviving this old thread as it looks that the designer that @pixelpusher found at that time is too busy to work on this small project.

I would be interested to work on it, with the goal of open sourcing it later on if I can make it to the end.

I started working on a layout options using KLE for a soldered PCB:

I tried to not make a Swiss cheese on the bottom row, with only two options:

  • Win key 6.25u spacebar.
  • Win keyless 7u spacebar.

Then an option of normal/stepped capslock and nomal/split backspace.
No ISO for now, this makes quite a mess on the PCB and not much people are using it (hey I’m French and still an ANSI layout user);

Also there is a debate on having the PCB soldered or hotswap, what do you think would be the most popular ?
In the case of hotswap, we may end up to select one of the 2 bottom rows if I can’t play with socket orientation.

Original PCB USB connector is Mini B.
Finding Mini B cables is getting more complicated nowadays and Micro USB is marginally wider (6.9mm for micro vs 6.8mm for mini) so I would lean to use micro instead. USB C is too wide for this board unfortunately.

As there are models with Nylon I’d put RGB underglow to add a bit of bling, but I do not plan to add per-key lighting.

I did not started the PCB design yet, so it is time to give your inputs guys :wink:
For example I could add back ISO support if many people really want it.

Happy to hear that someone is interested in making this. I would do it myself if I had any idea how. However, the goal was to design something better, and I’m certain anything I taught myself wouldn’t result in a better PCB. :grin:

Your decisions sound good to me. Limited bottom row options, no per-key rgb. I would prefer the original USB mini, but if micro is the only option, I could live with that.

I think hotswap might be interesting because it might interest more m65-a owners. Perhaps someone with a perfectly fine working board might want to pick up a hotswap PCB and a new plate to try something different?

Speaking of, are you thinking about making plates as well? I believe that the git repository has the original plate file that you could work from.

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Good to hear you are still interested :slight_smile:

USB mini is definitely possible, just that I personally found it was a pain in the arse to find a proper cable without buying it fron the internet.
The problem with USB micro is that it is thinner than USB mini so it will probably not be centered exactly with the case hole.

USB mini it is then :wink:

I could definitely start with an hotswap board.
I’ll see if I can fit all layouts in it, if not we may have to make a choice.

Yes I’ve seen them :wink:
And I’ll also work on plates of course.
But for the moment my idea on them is not very clear as there are a lot of possibilities.

I could provide different formats depending on the material the user would want:

  • DXF format for laser cutting services.
  • PCB gerbers for FR4/Aluminum PCB manufacturing.
  • maybe also STEP format for CNC manufacturing (LaserBoost also recently manages this format) ?

We can keep the original shape, or go a bit crazy like adding flex cuts and/or leafsprings; the original design looks to be very rigid unless you go the plastic route.

Now in term of PCB improvements my vision is (this is what I do in my latest PCBs like the Leyden Jar):

  • ESD protection chip.
  • Overcurrent protection with a resettable fuse.
  • EMI protection with a ferrite bead (took the idea from Gonlindrim PCBs).
  • RP2040 MCU (tons of flash storage, tons of RAM, very easy to flash, easy to work with, never out of stock, very cheap).

It will not be Hiney quality (I’m an amateur), but if I have the time to work on it I think I can have something working better than the original :wink:

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I started working on a replacement PCB, with precious infomation and feedback given by @pixelpusher :wink:
More details on the thread below:

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