My current daily driver is a MiniVan Catalyst with aluminium case and GMK Paperwork. It was — until the self-isolation and home office due to COVID19 — my travel keyboard which I used to carry around in a MiniVan holster inside my daypack. Here’s a potato shot of it:
Until last night it was plateless and had Zealios v2 67g switches. It wasn’t too loud for home office (and especially was more quiet than my other MiniVans with plastic case), but a while ago I wanted to use it at the annual general meeting (AGM) of an association for writing the minutes — and it was too loud despite I thought it was quite silent for not being explicitly dampened at all.
My daily driver of the past few months (approximately from January when I came back from the 36C3 until a week ago or so) was another plateless MiniVan, this time with black stock plastic case, GMK SkIIdata and Durock T1 switches. Another potato shot:
I planned to make that aluminium MiniVan really silent since that AGM. Did that last night despite I don’t really need a silent keyboard for home-office:
Replaced the Zealios with Zilents v2 65g. Had to rip them out of an incomplete 60% build with hotswap DZ60 — which I never used because the Control key caps (SA Carbon) scratched on the inner corners of the wooden case and I still don’t have the proper plate for that build. (Probably need to get a Dremel or so to get that 60% case fixed. Just using a file didn’t work out.)
Added a dampening foam by MKUltra.click which until then was in that black MiniVan mentioned above. Had to rip out all switches except those of the spacebars to unmount the foam there. Rebuilt that MiniVan without the foam again.
Added a yet unused MiniVan plate (from the MiniVan Catalyst GB; was too lazy to add it to any of my MiniVans until now) to extend the dampening effect of the foam.
I’m really happy with the outcome. My MiniVan Catalyst is mostly silent now. Just the spacebars are still as loud as before, probably because of not much dampening foam below them. Maybe I should also lube their stabs and/or try a gauze mod (or how are they called?). Not sure if the latter is possible at all for below-3u spacebars, though.
Yeah, I was tempted to go WKL, but the blockers I had didn’t match the case too well. Not sure why, but pics from the web are not loading up right now. I’ll try to get a different one up.
Saw two different pictures of an SGI Bigfoot. Initially, I just saw an error icon. Then I did a Shift-Reload, got a picture, then a few seconds later the system reloaded the page itself and I got another picture.
BTW: If this is from a Bigfoot, then your 60% has ALPS switches, right?
Ok cool, it’s just on my side then. Yep I pulled the tactile leaf out of some really good condition SKCM oranges I had to make some really nice linears!
bottom board: isolation bottom burger mount
the boards have Gateron Yellow, keycaps are G20 Semiotic
I bottom out 3 keys at once and try to use the same force on both boards, my fingers actually receive less harsh feedback on the burger mount board.
I hope that my feelings aren’t deceiving me.
I’m gonna use this mounting style a lot more in the future.
I was hoping to get in on Savage65 (a burger mount board), but it doesnt look like Paypal will be a payment option so that rules it out for me. They have had great reviews, might want to look at it
Following a gut feeling for needing some change in my home-office, I just switched my daily-driver from the MiniVan Catalyst with Zilents v2 to a black HHKB Professional 2 with a custom Skidolcha-style “Domikey × Hammer HHKB Geeks keycap set” (originally purchased at Massdrop, now available at KPRepublic). Potato shot:
I really love that you can make the whole bottom row just out of accent colors while having the common targets for accent colors (Escape and Enter) in standard colors. Kinda reminds me of some of the ideas behind GMK Lunar. (PSA: GMK Lunar GB ends in about 1.5 days!)
The trackball on the right side is a rather cheap-ish but at least non-radio Mod-IT PX-4985-919 I bought at PEARL and pimped with the grey ball of a <rant>rather expensive Logitech MX Ergo trackball which I no more use because Logitech refuses to fix some security flaws found in their crappy Unifying radio protocol and don’t offer their high-end trackball model with just a wired connection.</rant>
I finally have a work from home setup I’m mostly happy with now that it looks like I’m going to be doing this for a while. I’m limited to space for a 60% with my big mousepad, I threw dots on the T60 last night to use for this week.
Here is my KBP V80 with Canon Hipros. This is the model with the Matias red linear switches but I will be desoldering and throwing in some lubed SKCL greens shortly.
WAIT WHAT. IT’S BEEN THIS LONG?
Lol wowee zowee. Nice to see that board built up with OG Holy Pandas though. What a wombo Combo! Can we get a underside pic to see that beautiful “clock” and engravings?
I usually buy kits I like and build them when I have time – Work makes it difficult and they get put on the backburner – one of the perks of this quarantine is certainly more time for building! May even put together my TX1800 and F&T 1916
