The "low cost keyboard" by Don Lancaster was featured in the February 1973 issue of the Radio Electronics magazine. The article starts on page 54.
This keyboard was built in the YouTube video titled Building Don Lancaster's ASCII Keyboard.
The artwork in the article was used to create PCBs of the "low cost keyboard".
I made two different versions of the PCB - one original version and the other modified for modern key switches. The original PCBs are available for at https://www.kalinchuk.com/product-page/don-lancaster-s-low-cost-keyboard-pcb-original. The modern variant PCBs are available at https://www.kalinchuk.com/product-page/don-lancaster-s-low-cost-keyboard-pcb-modern. You can also use the Original Gerber or Modern Gerber files to fabricate the PCBs yourself.
Refer to the article for the parts required to build the original keyboard. I decided to use the modern variant of the PCB so that I could use MX key switches.
If you're building the modern variant, the keyboard only needs key switches, key caps and wire for jumpers. In my build, I used key stabilizers for the space bar. The key switches are standard MX switches and the key caps are standard caps. I used a set of standard key caps for my build.
Another builder used a different set of keycaps, again available from Amazon.
One additional (and optional) part is the Amphenol 143-022-01 connector. You can use this connector or you can solder wires directly to the PCB when connecting to an ASCII encoder.
Below, you will find the final, assembled PCB. The only thing left to do is to customize the key caps.
If you used the second set of keycaps, you can print the BMP file, making sure that each surrounding square border is 0.5" on each side. The P-touch key label file is also provided.
The original artwork contains a bug in the jumper wires section which makes the "@" and ":" keys behave incorrectly. This can be fixed by swapping the jumper wires 25 & 26 (from the right). This issue has been fixed in the updated Gerbers.
