More here.

Corsair recently shut down Drop, their Keyboard/Audio/EDC brand that used to be Massdrop. In the fire sale, you could get a solid aluminum TKL (the "CTRL") case for ten bucks. I have done quite a few handwired keyboards in the past few years, usually custom layouts (or else why bother?), but this seemed like an interesting challenge. The integrated switchplate was not milled to very tight tolerances, so I had to find the manufacturing files for an open source aftermarket PCB and turn one of them into a DXF file for my laser, so I could use it as a dummy PCB to hold the switches still. I also had to 3D print a spacer to go between the case's two halves, because the spacer/LED diffuser that originally went with that board was a separate part and I didn't realize I'd need one until the site was shut down. I used an open source tool to generate a build of the open source "ZMK" firmware, and after some tedious troubleshooting and some structural hot-glue, everything works and from the outside it looks pretty normal. Caps are MOA profile from Amazon resale, and switches are generic reds (light linear), lubed and spring swapped so they're heavy linears.

Damn, what a way to find out that (mass)drop.com is dead. As I own a CTRL, I would have picked up a spare case for sure. That's cool to hear about your project though. And yes, the CTRL case was not manufactured particularly tightly, there were a ton of complaints about it once it initially shipped.

How y'all get by without a numpad, I'll never understand.

We're not accountants... most of us use numbers very rarely.

My most-used boards do have a numpad, but it's not an everyday essential, and one of my earlier hand-wire projects was a numpad, so I go grab it if I'm running one of my no-numpad boards but need to do some data entry (usually CAD dimensions for me).

It's also my go-to for global hotkeys and macros if programs can tell numpad keystrokes from just numbers.

I'm with you, I might have purchased a few things if I had known. I have a thx789 that I use all the time, and a few keyboards. Although drop had been going downhill ever since the Corsair buyout it's still the end of an era. Hopefully apos can fill the gap somewhat.

...wdym use numbers rarely? They're numbers, you can't type nine into a spreadsheet and make it do math.

Is this one of those times when my lived experience is deeply unlike that of others? I hope so, it's been a while since I had one and I was starting to worry.

Yeah, it's been all downhill since they dropped "mass" from the name, which I think came a while before the Corsair buyout. Honestly, drop has been filled with licensed BS since Corsair bought them, so this really isn't a huge loss I guess. It still feels like a loss though because I remember how it used to be.

I also have a thx789, excellent amp and one of the few that powered my HE-6 sufficiently.

I rarely need one, and when I do have the need, I can just pull out another keyboard or standalone numpad. I imagine I am not alone in this community in having... a few extra keyboards.

I'm at a game dev school and they have a several years old stack of mechanical keyboards, never used, all with no numpads. Management bought them without talking to teachers or students and when they came in everyone was like "you realize we literally can't do computer work without numpads right?". They had to buy a whole new batch with numpads and now it's cheap plastic keyboards lol

... Nobody asked me, but they sell standalone mechanical numpads. 🫤