I’m doing research for a GB for SA moogle kits, to maybe offer “missing” keys that fill in gaps in old sets that used stock Signature Plastics colors. (Codename: SA Milk Carton.)
What keys were omitted from your favorite SA sets, that would absolutely make your day if they existed? Minivan backspace? 2u shfit? ISO Enter? F13-F24? Convex minibars?
I want to compile a list of these, and then see if I can assemble them into a cohesive kit that could be produced in a handful of common colors.
(For me, it’d be 1.25u/1.75u arrow keys for the lower right of 60% boards. I’ve only ever seen these in the Laser “Exotic” kit.)
EDIT: I wanted to add that I’m only looking at modifiers; mixing in alphas is too complicated. And I want to try to avoid colorways that Arcalogic has already had “missing key” sets made for.
Also, I’m open to weird-ass old 7bit legends that haven’t been used in over a decade, if any of those are popular favorites.
NN black with WFK white legends (would exactly or closely match Spectra, Metaverse, Standard Black, Maestro, Domikey & Maxkey BW sets, Magic City, and others)
GQM grey with GAL cream legends (would exactly or closely match Oblivion and Carbon, and be okay-ish with Honeywell and ASCII?)
Dasher or Symbiosis mod blue with white legends?
I don’t know if a brown similar to Retro, Chocolatier, and Espresso would be popular enough?
Only thing I can think of is some really old sets might not have the 1.75u Shift. I can’t think of any off the top of my head, but I seem to have run across the complaint in older (like pre-2015) posts that 1.75u shift keys were still rare. Not sure if that extended to whatever SP was doing back then. Nuclear Data still has it hiding in the “Alternate” sub-kit like it’s some sort of bizarre oddity, so maybe it’s missing altogether in others? I really don’t know. This seems like a pretty good kitting overall.
Ooh, good catch! That reminded me of another oddity with the older sets, that they had 4-4 bottom rows instead of 4-3, but the Shifts were R3 because R4 molds didn’t exist yet. So I don’t think there’s a perfect way to match with those, but something is better than nothing.
I don’t even know if/when I’ll try to run this; I’ve got a couple sets in different stages of production and design that I want to see through first. But that gives me more time to research and make more tweaks.
Those use left-aligned Wyse-style legends, correct? Not sure if it’d be possible to do them as part of this, but I’d love to if I could. I’ve checked at the Filco sets in the past and kind of blown them off for not having coverage I’d need, so that would seem like the perfect use case for a set like this.
Since I’m commenting anyway, here’s an updated render with 1.75u shift added, and some branding.
SA Honeywell is still my fav today (using it everyday at work, and it gets regular compliments) but it’s lacking `¬ 2" 3£ keys despite having '@ #~ and ISO enter. (using UK ISO intl)
I have Honeywell too, and it’s bizarre how it’s missing the negation, 2 and 3 keys but has the others. I think SA Solarized and Penumbra feature the same weird kitting.
I’d love to toss those three keys into this, but adding alphas makes it more complicated in terms of matching the colors to as many sets as possible. What I did to “fix” Honeywell was order the SA Standard White on Black ISO kit from Signature Plastics, which is white with black legends that very close to the dark grey ones Honeywell uses. You have to look at it very closely in good lighting to tell it’s not a perfect match.
I’m not planning to try to run this kit anytime soon; I have one set finishing manufacturing, a set I’m waiting to hear back about getting picked up, plus another new design that’s taking all of my spare time right now. So if anyone else wants to steal this idea and run with it, feel free!
TBH a new run of the complete Honeywell set, with the true original SP colors would be neat, it’s a timeless classic. They are also very slightly different from the Maxkey variant, a colleague of mine has it on his work keeb so I can see them side by side.
My favorite version was 7bit’s Round 5. So many choices; the kitting options go on for pages and pages: Round 5 - Deskthority wiki
I’d love to see a rerun too. I don’t know who, if anyone, has any claim to the colorway since it’s based on a historical board. SA Honeywell ran on Originative’s site, and they’ve been known to be super defensive about designs they’ve run, like Hyperfuse, making threats to shut down reruns even in other profiles.
There’s a DCS set being made right now, seems OcO have disappeared somewhat or at least did not interfere ? This would open the possibility of a proper rerun - that last deskthority run was so many years ago. And it’s a low hanging fruit really, since SP have the colors locked for this one.
I wasn’t sure if the DCS set had their permission. Another DCS set based on Hyperfuse got shut down because they threatened SP. HSA Hyperfuse was made in China, beyond their legal reach.
