Underwood Number 5 – Mini-ITX Computer Mod
Posted by on May 21st,2007
Turning a typewriter into a keyboard has been done several times and it always impresses me terribly. But turning a typewriter into a whole PC? That’s even more impressive, surely. Above is the mini-ITX modded Underwood No.5 typewriter mod, sent in by Ms. Brumfield of The Steampunk Home. The mini-ITX is a very specificially tiny computer motherboard (and other elements) that modders have put in the most curious of containers – this typewriter being only one of the more Steampunk.
While on closer inspection the keyboard itself lets the mod down a little, it’s still far beyond my skills and a lovely piece to sit in a study. Particularly amusing is the use of a peculiar piece of software called Home Typist that lets you assign a sound to each keypress – while the site has some very odd (and no doubt deeply annoying) sounds to choose, the modder recorded the sound of the keypresses from a real working Underwood, and used those. So it now sounds, and looks very much like the real thing!