Disassembly

The Mistel X-VIII is a typical two-piece plastic case keyboard, with disassembly necessitating carefully prying apart the interlocking tabs that hold the top panel in place. You will need a thin, flat object to do so, and may well damage the case here. Once done, the top panel lifts off completely, which gives us a better look at the indicator LEDs. No screws hold the PCB piece in the bottom panel either, with a secure compression fit doing the job. So you can carefully slide the middle piece out as well, at least by enough to access the internal USB cable going from the daughter PCB on the bottom panel hosting the Type-C port to the PCB itself. Dislodge it and you are done separating the three main pieces.


The PCB is a deep red in color, with a matte finish and markings galore for the revisions and ROHS compliance. Solder quality is excellent, but keep your hands off the PCB since solder points are still sharper than you would expect. We see the PCB is also shared across the USB and BT models, with a secondary connector that is unoccupied but presumably going to a battery on the bottom panel piece. I would have liked some sound-absorbing foam in that space, which makes the wired-only variant seem like the barely loved stepchild of the family.


Powering the Mistel X-VIII is a Holtek HT32F52352 32-bit ARM Cortex M0+ USB microcontroller operating at 48 MHz with up to 128 KB onboard flash memory and up to 16 KB SRAM. Mistel tried to hide the identity of the MCU, but clearly didn't do so well enough. As we will see later on, there is some functionality in terms of key assignment, and the MCU had no issues handling them. All the components, including the switches, LEDs, and capacitors, are soldered to a multi-layered PCB.

Before we move on, be advised that disassembly may void the warranty and that TechPowerUp is not liable for any damages incurred if you decide to go ahead and do so anyway.