"Dr. K" Turns the 8BitDo Nintendo Famicom-Style Retro Mechanical Keyboard Into a True Computer
A compact Radxa Zero single-board computer and some careful cutting and drilling gets the Famicom-themed keyboard playing actual games.
Pseudonymous South Korean maker "Dr. K" has turned 8BitDo's recently launched retro-styled mechanical keyboard into something new — by embedding a Radxa Zero single-board computer inside, capable of emulating the Nintendo Famicom from which the keyboard borrows its color scheme.
"I recently purchased the 8BitDo retro mechanical keyboard, which has received rave reviews among retro enthusiasts," Dr. K says of the project. "I also added a single board computer, Radxa Zero, to make it an all-in-one PC like the MSX [standardized family of Japanese home computers]. Therefore, I think it would be a good idea for those who want to make it to modify it by inserting various single board computers."
The idea of putting a computer in a keyboard isn't new. As Dr. K says, the MSX range placed the computer hardware into the keyboard housing — as did the vast majority of home computers in the 1980s and early 1990s. Even today, you can pick up a Raspberry Pi 400 keyboard-computer — but if you want the retro styling of 8BitDo's device, you'll have to do it yourself.
Dr. K's project sees the keyboard disassembled and the compact Radxa Zero single-board computer — which is powered an Amlogic S905Y2 system-on-chip with four Arm Cortex-A53 cores, an Arm Mali-G31-MP2 graphics processor, and which can be purchased with a choice of 512MB, 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB of RAM — tucked away inside. Holes are drilled to mount the board and provide access to its ports, with an extension board used to provide a means of swapping the microSD card from outside the keyboard.
Once installed and the keyboard reassembled, the new all-on-one boots into Linux — which is then equipped with RetroPie, providing a means to emulate classic systems including the Nintendo Family Computer (Famicom) on which the keyboard's color scheme is based and which was launched in the west as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Dr. K also shows the device running more demanding emulation engines, including the Super Famicom (SNES) and Nintendo 64.
The project is fully detailed in the video above, and on Dr. K's YouTube channel.