1 reply to this topic

[Mike17032]

Is anyone out there using a Merc Stealth (either the older Ideazon or newer Steelseries) keyboard on a Mac?  

I know there are no drivers for it, so you will be lacking a lot of the macro and customization support.  But will the gaming keypad on the left side work at all with no drivers in OSX?  All the keys look like they have a default mapping in the pictures (WASD and others ect), so will it use those keys?  I don't care if I can't change them as long as it defaults to those.

I am trying to replace my Wolfking Timerwolf keyboard that finally died again, they are an awesome keyboard but getting to be impossible to find.  The Merc Stealth seems to be the only thing that is close with that gaming pad on the side.  Thanks for any help!

[Yawp]

Yep, I use a Merc Stealth KB for playing WoW mostly, and I really like it. It has basic PnP compatibility in OS X, but there's some stuff you should be aware of. The left side of the KB, the gaming pad, works fine, since those keys are just a remapping of the standard keys on the KB. For me, this was the most important thing, because the layout of these keys is really to my liking. The regular KB works as normal for everything: gaming, word processing etc. Where things get funky is on the Numpad. The Many of these keys work fine when you keybind them for gaming, but some do some wacky stuff, and are better left alone. I rarely use them, except for non-critical functions. Outside of games, since the Numlock key simply does not work, the Numpad is utterly useless. F keys work no problem. Further, forget about using the "special" media keys. They are completely out of whack and do not work as advertised. You can however, change the LED color of the KB using the key designated for that function. Lastly, the USB and audio ports do not work at all.

Really, the only reason I use this KB is because I bought it when I was still gaming on Windows. Even then the software for the KB setup was atrocious. Never worked right. So I just stuck with keybinding everything by hand in each game I played. At around $80, it's an  expensive option for a KB that doesn't work right in OS X, if you're buying one brand new. I probably wouldn't do it.

Hope this helps.