Thanks. For how quickly it came together, I’m relatively pleased. I did tweak the keymap a little bit more to better match how I actually type, and specifically for things like emails and comments, I’m not really running all that slowly. Still a mental hurdle when I need to get into the layers, but for the most part they’re fairly intuitive. I also moved the firmware over to QMK/VIAL because ZMK Studio, at least as I had configured it in the Shield Wizard, didn’t use persistent memory to store keymap changes after disconnect (I’ve already fixed the visual layout in VIAL compared to those pics, LOL). It’s probably an issue on the other two boards I made with the ZMK shield wizard, as they’re also RP2040, but one was a TKL and the other was a keymap I have been using for over a year and didn’t really need tweaking, so I may be okay for now. For this lil guy, I think the flexibility will be necessary. I also have three of the four LEDs working, though as boringly traditional HID indicators, not fancy layer indicators, which is apparently NOT a standard part of any major firmware.
Got some beauty shots of my Pangea mini this morning.
more on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DcLx9ydEfY8/?igsh=MnNzanpxeWxqMXBl
Absolutely lovely. I have a soft spot for two tone boards like this one. I still regret not picking up a Modern Dasher like 8 years ago.
do you still have this set?
Sweet. How do you like the Navy Blues?
I rebuilt my Tada68 a few months ago, though I didn’t consider it as completed cause I haven’t build the firmware with QMK MSYS and flash it yet. Now that I have the time to do it, the process took long but it went smoothly thanks to the guide + digging around a bit for info on QMK discord and geekhack.
Aluminum plate, Kailh BOX White V2, Gateron clip-ins w/ C3 wires (205g0), DCS Intro WoB
Looking back at my first Tada68 build in 2019 that had BOX White V1, Cherry clip-ins and PBT gray keycaps, I thought about all the things I used to lack experience of.
The stab ticking on the backspace, sluggish enter key, putting on keycaps with a few keys on the wrong rows (and in this picture I thought I was missing the insert key but it only came with the tilde key which I then put on after taking this lol). I also had no idea how to do keymapping layer on the DZ65. And then few months later when I was trying to change switches, I accidentally popped one of the hotswap socket and I couldn’t get replacement for that PCB anymore so it was sitting in the box left in my drawer for a while.
Good thing the Tada68 PCB was available once Drop started liquidating, it’s nice to revive this keyboard and think about the improvements.
It’s interesting to me that a hobby whose fans so readily embrace, or at least seem to respect, vintage gear also seems to ignore anything that’s old but not quite old enough, or has the wrong firmware or USB connector.
Nice to see a “modern classic” getting some TLC.
