If you’re a certain type of geek, especially a certain type of Emacs geek, you likely share a dream with the rest of your tribe: having a Symbolics or a Space Cadet keyboard. I’ve written about that before but now there’s some more news. Paul Graham just tweeted:
Vilem Vychodil has recreated the famous Symbolics keyboard: https://t.co/o9DiwyP27y
— Paul Graham (@paulg) January 20, 2021
When you follow the link you’ll discover that what’s being offered is a series of kits that can be programmed to be several types of keyboards including the Symbolics and Space Cadet varieties. The kits range from a set of parts that you have to solder to the PC board and otherwise assemble to a presoldered board, to a kit with most of the hard work done but that requires some assembly.
You may regard the fact that they’re offering (only) kits a plus or a minus but there’s a further downside: the kits are expensive. The most basic kit is €931 and the most fully built is €1,262. That’s a lot of money for a keyboard and is surely out of range for many of us but if you really, really want a Space Cadet keyboard it may be worth the cost both in money and the time to build it.