FatBottomedBoard Is a Massive Sun Type 5-Style Mechanical Keyboard for Serious Work

If you spend your work days sitting in front of a computer, then your keyboard is just as important as a musician’s guitar or a carpenter’s chisels. Your keyboard is an important tool, and likely the one you spend the most time in physical contact with. If you’ve been using the kind of cheap, mushy membrane keyboard that comes with desktop computers, then you’ve been doing yourself a disservice. A quality mechanical keyboard can improve your typing speed and accuracy, while simultaneously reducing repetitive stress injuries. Ben took that sentiment to heart when he built FatBottomedBoard, which is a massive Sun Type 5-style mechanical keyboard designed for serious work.

The Sun Type 5 was a keyboard from the mid-1990s that was designed specifically for use with Sun Microsystems’ SpaceStation workstations. It was larger than a standard 100 percent size keyboard, thanks to the additional two rows of keys on the left hand side that were used for special functions. But Sun Type 5 keyboards have poor compatibility with modern operating systems, and they contained lackluster rubber dome key switches anyway. Ben’s FatBottomedBoard was built from scratch to retain the Sun Type 5 layout, but with modern features and classic mechanical Cherry Black key switches. Those key switches, of which there are a total of 119, were scavenged from old AT/XT keyboards from the ‘80s, which saved Ben a considerable amount of money.

As Ben points out, this isn’t the kind of keyboard that you’d want to bring with you on a business trip. It’s huge and it’s heavy — the kind of keyboard you don’t move from your desk. That weight is largely due to the enclosure, which was crafted from a solid sheet of 2mm (12 gauge) stainless steel. Ben didn’t have access to any fancy tools like a CNC machine, and so that enclosure was cut and formed by hand. The key switches were all mounted directly onto the enclosure and were hand-wired. The keyboard contains two Teensy++ 2.0 development boards. One of them monitors the keyboard matrix and runs QMK (Quantum Mechanical Keyboard) software, while the other handles the two rotary encoders, the LCD screen, backlight control, and more. Ben has integrated a ton of functionality, including on-board macro recording and control, layout switching, and even games that can be played on the LCD. Simply put, this is the ultimate keyboard for power users.