frankly anyone who uses this will be using a second layer with the fn key for the f1-f12 keys and page/row navigation anyway, so I figured they can use fn+wasd for arrows easily enough

you might be wondering why I didn't put arrow keys in when I had tons of room for them (and some other design decisions) and mostly it's because I was going for an old-school/retro look like early commodore/atari, with the taper and narrow lower rows and elements we miss from modern 60% boards

custom cut aluminum plate

kailh deep sea silent switches and some stabs I had on hand

reverse side

xvx pbt moa keycaps

finally got my custom plates from the fabrication people (after paying import fees, so, even more expensive than expected) and threw this together to test it out… so far so good!

guess I gotta finish making something to put this in (after I handwire the switches and program the mc)

thanks! sadly the set doesn’t come with exactly what I need for this board so a few are not quite right (and also I soldered left control switch wrong, offset by 0.25u, whoops) but I had them on hand - they paired poorly with an led board, but this skelett 40 has no led, so I moved them over

it’s only taken this long because 1) had to revisit the drawing board for some things re:mounting 2) waiting on a few last pieces that I needed measurements from 3) I’m a lazy pos and just wasn’t working on it for a couple of weeks tbqh

cyberdeck wip, a black dual-handle tactical aio with mounted skelett 40 keyboard

another angle of the deck wip being held up to show that the contents are mounted and not falling out

this probably doesn’t look substantially different from whatever I last showed, but: rail and rod has been dry fit into the new cyberdeck print, and the new innards has all the heat inserts allowing me to screw it into the case and mount the keyboard

just need to finish the face, then electronics

t-deck plus and two t3s3 lora devices on desk mat

got some lora/meshtastic things from lilygo to start playing with (still waiting on my heltec order, eta monday)

can definitely grind the metal down further, but the idea is that I was using a standard size rail from any ole hardware store, so I think I need to increase the size of the hole and do a reprint

but since I've already kinda botched this rail piece, I'm tempted to just make this particular one fit

well, the tolerances for the aluminum rail to slot into the redesigned handle portion is way, way too tight - bent the rail trying to hammer it in, and that was after putting it back on the grinder to take the corners off and slim it down a bit

so now what

abe always has the best projects

back on the printing grind, hopefully this newest revision of my deck insert actually works this time (unlike the previous three)

still waiting on a heltec v3 before I can fully finish the faceplate though - maybe I'll just print one without it just so I can somewhat finish a thing...

(especially because every single time the answer has ended up being a hallucination, "try changing y in config" - yeah that ...doesn't exist, chatgpt made it up, creative writing in its futile attempt to be 'helpful')

on the other side of the equation, and even worse: when i do end up with a q i can't find the answer to, cave, and make a post on a relevant sub seeking answers, exclusively getting replies like "i don't know the answer but i asked chatgpt for you and it said x"

if you don't know, don't answer!

oh jeez there's a whole sub of them

i'm seeing it everywhere now and it is absolutely rotting minds

thread reading "asked chatgpt if this would work and it said it was ok so i did the thing and it isn't working, please help"

i mean, obviously? chatgpt isn't tech support, and you could have just asked the community you're asking now?

there are probably lessons about cleaning things up and not procrastinating in there - but it's not like i've got a deadline, so whatever, i'll get to it when i get to it

only problem is i keep starting new projects since the others are at a standstill, and each unfinished project adds more chaos

project(s) status: bunch of things i need to solder but solder workbench is too cluttered to actually use and i have yet to force myself to sort that out

also need to rework some of the aluminum parts for the deck assembly, but we got so much snow here lately that my shop is basically inaccessible

anyway, 3d printed a little 7" pseudo-rack to stack the switch, my minipc, and also an audio interface so that the whole mess occupies barely any more of a desktop footprint than any of the items alone, inspired by homelab stuff I've seen, modular so I can add shelves later (like net switch for lan)

while the windows machine is mostly for vr gaming, which doesn't technically need kvm because vr has a desktop view, I do still sometimes play regular aaa games which this minipc can't handle - but mostly it's needing kvm to debug why the vr link is failing to connect or something like that

done a little desk reorg, including adding a kvm switch to my stack so now I can easily switch between my linux minipc (daily driving) and my windows pc (gaming)

combined with syncthing/my nas (also firefox sync ig) its fairly seamless to switch between the two and pick up whatever I was doing

that's easier than memorizing the scale number, thanks!

just finished Thank Goodness You’re Here! which was a true delight, highly recommend

missed 8 hidden achievements on my first playthrough, but I’ll definitely play through that again at some point and try to pick those up

welp, battery is mostly charged up so time to unplug and see if this stays powered. need to tear down now anyway because the furry demons who live in here with me have awoken and precarious new wires can be trouble

error in trigger-install scriplet gtk2-0:2.24.33-19.fc41.riscv64

womp, unsurprised though …maybe one day

uh oh, just saw some red while installing kde… still going though so uh ok, ganbatte little guy

should mention I am not getting audio out through usb-c to hdmi. not sure if that’s common or unusual, but for now, no sound (since there’s no audio out on the board)

i just dislike gnome so very much

so far so good? installing now, fingers crossed. meanwhile, tried to connect to my nas, got to the login but couldn’t mount for some reason. only wanted a wallpaper to replace the defaults so meh, I’ll try again later

I will probably break this but heck, let’s see if I can install kde manually

btop in fedora 41 cli on risc-v mainboard displaying stats

fastfetch in fedora 41 cli displaying details

btop and fastfetch ok