I haven’t owned a mechanical keyboard in years, but I found this while thrifting the other day. Cleaned it up, everything seems to work fine.
The only thing that irks me is the spacebar. It sort of teeter totters and only works when I press in the center. Are there supposed to be three switches under it?
Also, is there any way to swap the alt/windows keys at the hardware/firmware level? I prefer the macOS layout and would like to avoid juggling configuration software on each device I own.
It looks like you’re missing the stabilizing bar that normally goes under the spacebar. It looks something like this, though I don’t know if the one featured in thst link will work for your keyboard.
You’re missing these pieces that connect the spacebar key to the stabilizer wire. They should be on the original spacebar but can be slightly difficult to remove. They are just friction fit and are removable though.
I like the colors, cool find!
This is a very standard AliExpress keycap set, it should be on the first page of results for “DSA keycap set”
I’ll be honest I haven’t explored much
Followup question, where do you recommend getting keycaps from?
I get mine from AliExpress. They’re by no means good, but I refuse to spend more than 30€ on plastic. I also get my board from there, there are some good deals on subpart boards that are actually quite serviceable.
They’re by no means good
I would also say they’re (mostly) by no means bad. For me, keycaps get into the area of diminishing returns very quickly. If some iffy kerning on Caps Lock bothers someone that much, then they should do what they need to, but it’s not hard for me to find sufficiently durable and attractive keycaps at a good price these days.
Also, while I try to avoid cloned novelties, I have fairly little sympathy for designers trying to assert some sort of moral claim to colorways, often colorways where they were already adapting existing vintage boards. By all means make as much money as you can from the channels who want to be first to market and work with you. Or sometimes, the only way to get a certain profile is to go through the vendors who own the molds; that’s cool too.
Pink and green Enter keys, however, do not obligate anyone to pay GMK prices.
Completely agree. Also, fuck the artificial scarcity culture in mk. Why are DSA drifters a collector item, they’re pretty but there’s nothing that says only 500 of them must exist.
