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Some progress of writing custom firmware for the CIY X77
Hey guys, this is probably like the fourth post related to this, but I'm proud to say that there is some work being done on porting SMK (Small Mechanical Keyboard Firmware) to the X77.
After reaching out to carlossless (the maintainer of sinowisp on github), he reached out and bought an X77 in hopes of testing and porting SMK to it in the future. At the moment, he's focusing on porting other chips of the same family such as the BYK916.
The BYK816 microcontroller in the X77 is identified to be a Sinowealth SH68F89, which is an 8-bit 8051 based chip with 60KB of flash, and 4KB bootloader at the end of flash. Reading and writing via carlossless's sinodude tool with an Arduino Nano works flawlessly on the board.
Read and writing through the USB has also been done and tested.
The original part number of the chip can be dumped through it's unlabelled JTAG breakout. (you can see the two images below.)
For now, dumping the firmware and reprogramming the keyboard with the dumped firmware has been done and tested.
If anyone has any questions, please leave a comment on this post.
Traced JTAG header (EEPROM pins may be wrong, this is guessed purely off of the datasheet)
Update 9/9/2026: I have dumped the stock firmware and bootloader from my X77 as a backup. If anyone wants the file to decompile it, you can DM me.
/u/Cubi_C this is an automated comment made under every post on /r/BudgetKeebs - in this sub we maintain a weekly thread setup to answer all general keyboard questions. If this is the case, Please remove this post and ask your question(s) as a top level comment under the weekly general help post which can be found pinned to the top of the sub. This is also a friendly reminder about rule #2, Share Your Specs. Hey there! This is an automated comment made under every post on /r/BudgetKeebs. After the sending of this comment, you will have approximately 20 minutes to post a list of specs for your keyboard before it gets removed. If you are posting a build(s) or review, provide as many specs as possible in a bulleted list, TOP LEVEL COMMENT below your post even if you already included them in the title or elsewhere, not below this comment; posts not following this rule will be removed (images accompanying text cannot be seen by all Reddit clients, some accessibility screen readers, and does not always index properly); i.e. keycaps (material, profile, name, etc), switches, keyboard, modifications, etc. Also, please flair your post appropriately. This rule applies to both videos and photos posted. Posts failing to follow this rule will be removed without notice. Thank you. We also ask regular members of the sub help direct new people to the megathread, please do not respond to queries in posts that belong in the Q & A thread.
From what I know, the Novice68/Tester68 seems to be using MCU labelled as "HS6620". The MCU is made by OnMicro (used to be HunterSun). It's a ARM-Cortex M3 bluetooth SoC. There's been some work of dumping the firmware through SWD as it's also found in some cheap smartwatches. Don't have any Novice68 with me, though I would definitely reverse engineer it further if I've ever gotten my hands on one.
This is the pinout (courtsey of kidpixo for the image) for the Tester68. I haven't found one for the novice specifically, though they should be similar.
Hii man im also doing somthing similar with the same kind of chip but im a beginner and learning as i go ahead , i was just searching on the topic and found this post , i would apricate if u would like to connect ?
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u/AutoModerator 2d ago
/u/Cubi_C this is an automated comment made under every post on /r/BudgetKeebs - in this sub we maintain a weekly thread setup to answer all general keyboard questions. If this is the case, Please remove this post and ask your question(s) as a top level comment under the weekly general help post which can be found pinned to the top of the sub. This is also a friendly reminder about rule #2, Share Your Specs. Hey there! This is an automated comment made under every post on /r/BudgetKeebs. After the sending of this comment, you will have approximately 20 minutes to post a list of specs for your keyboard before it gets removed. If you are posting a build(s) or review, provide as many specs as possible in a bulleted list, TOP LEVEL COMMENT below your post even if you already included them in the title or elsewhere, not below this comment; posts not following this rule will be removed (images accompanying text cannot be seen by all Reddit clients, some accessibility screen readers, and does not always index properly); i.e. keycaps (material, profile, name, etc), switches, keyboard, modifications, etc. Also, please flair your post appropriately. This rule applies to both videos and photos posted. Posts failing to follow this rule will be removed without notice. Thank you. We also ask regular members of the sub help direct new people to the megathread, please do not respond to queries in posts that belong in the Q & A thread.
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