Disassembly

One of the things I feel you might want to try out is the removal of the integrated wrist rest. It is fairly easy to do with nine Phillips head screws on the lower back that have to be removed. Once done, the two halves of the wrist rest come off, and you will notice the keyboard is now a lot easier to handle and move around if need be. A smaller desk space will appreciate this too. If you want to have the wrist rest, simply position the two halves back in place and screw them in.


There are eight more screws that keep the actual keyboard together, two of which are easily found on the corners while two more are hidden underneath the label surrounding the dip switches. Once done, the top and bottom panels can be removed from the steel plate/PCB piece. Just make sure you remove the USB connector cable, which, interestingly, is on an adapter that has been taped to the PCB for extra measure.


The actual PCB used was designed and certified in 2011, based on the date on it. This goes to show that the product has been in retail for years now, and has had some revisions on the top side (switches, for example). Solder quality is fairly good, and it helps that there are no LEDs to solder either. The PCB itself is a dual layer version, but you can see through it.


The USB connection feels solid, and the dip switches are well secured and don't feel flimsy when changed around. The actual controller is on the other side of the PCB, visible through a hole in the plate itself. Powering the keyboard is a Megawin MG84FL54BD 8-bit MCU with 16 KB of onboard flash memory to save and modify the firmware, which in turn controls the layout of the keyboard. There are also 256 bytes of internal scratch-pad RAM and 576 bytes of on-chip expanded RAM (XRAM) for any applications that require extra memory. Scroll to the bottom of this page and you will see that you need to access this and touch two of the small pins on it to do a reset of the MCU and erase any stored firmware.

Before we take a look at the driver, be advised that disassembly will void the warranty and that TechPowerUp is not liable for any damages incurred if you decided to go ahead and do so anyway.