[Coco] Mechanical keyboard upgrades for the CoCo

[Mark J. Blair]

The discussion of producing new mylar sheets has gotten me thinking... Way back in the day, I recall drooling over fancy keyboard upgrades for my CoCo 1 that were advertised in Rainbow Magazine. If I recall correctly, they were the HJL-57 keyboards. I didn't have any money, and I couldn't talk my dad into buying one, but they sure looked nice compared to that hard chiclet keyboard.

Has anybody considered manufacturing new mechanical keyboard upgrades for the CoCo family, perhaps using the popular Cherry MX series keyswitches? I expect that it would be prohibitively expensive, and I doubt that the entire remaining market for such a thing would be large enough to get the cost down even to the range of high-end gaming and programmer keyboards, which can run well over a hundred bucks. But maybe I'm wrong about that, and talking about the topic for a bit might be fun anyway.

So, what do y'all think? I'd enjoy replacing the mushy-feeling keyboard in my CoCo 3 with a set of clicky Cherry MX blues, even if only in my imagination.

-- 
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/