Tipro 8×16 — 128-Key POS Terminal Conversion

Introduction

A vintage Tipro 8×16 (128-key) mechanical point-of-sale terminal converted to run QMK Firmware using a custom daughterboard PCB (hand8x16).

Sourced from eBay (some new-old-stock after ~15 years, others heavily worn), the painted steel switch plate was stripped and polished to remove aged paint, and the yellowed plastic shell was repainted. The original 3-pin Cherry MX Black switches were desoldered and replaced, topped with a combination of MT3 Dasher and MT3 /dev/tty keycaps.

The custom controller PCB hosts a WeAct STM32F401 BlackPill and uses a 74HC595 shift register to drive the 7 status LEDs once the 24 matrix pins (8 rows + 16 columns) are allocated. Total conversion cost (excluding switches/keycaps) is around £10.

Daughterboard PCB

3D Render

Printed PCBs

Wiring & KiCad

• KiCad Daughterboard Project: m-lego/hand8x16 on GitLab

Firmware

• Prebuilt UF2: tipro_rev1_default.uf2

Compile from source:

git clone --recurse-submodules -b mlego https://github.com/alinelena/qmk_firmware.git qmk-alin
cd qmk-alin
qmk compile -kb tipro/rev1 -km default

Copy the resulting .uf2 file onto the MCU in bootloader mode.

Pinout Reference

• Columns (16): B9, B8, B7, B6, B5, B4, C14, C15, A0, A1, A2, A3, A7, B0, B10, B1
• Rows (8): B12, B13, B14, B15, A8, A10, A15, B3
• Status LEDs: Shift Register QA–QG
• 74HC595N Shift Register:
  • Data: A4
  • Latch: A6
  • Clock: A5

Before & After Gallery