DCX vs DCD vs DCL - Drop’s Keycap Profiles Explained
We’ve covered the basics of keycap profiles before—spherical/cylindrical, sculpted/uniform, etc. One thing that has come up more and more over the years as we’ve expanded our portfolio of offerings here at Drop is the distinction between some of our similar profiles. Specifically, what is the actual difference between DCX, DCD, and DCL? Cylindrical Profiles To recap the previous article on the topic, one of the most basic ways to separate various keycap profiles is by shape (cylindrical, spherical, or flat). DCX, DCD, and DCL are all cylindrical profiles. The most famous cylindrical profile is Cherry profile, as defined by the original manufacturer of the keycaps—Cherry. GMK now owns those tools, and as such, only they can technically claim to produce “Cherry” profile keycaps. Similar keycap profiles are often called Cherry profile colloquially, but are in actuality slightly different. For the sake of not splitting hairs, all of the cylindrical profiles discussed here are...
Apr 9, 2024
I'm used to paying $350+ for custom aluminum keyboards, but was totally shocked when I received my $160 KDB75. The keyboard was packaged extremely well and arrived from China with no flaws, and weighted far more than I was expecting. It weighs more than my RS96. I never was really into the 75% layout, but I was never into the 96 key layout until I tried it, so I figured I'd give it a try since the price was definitely right.
But enough of the "review" part, lets get on to programming this guy. I always like to do guides because I know that being intimidated by programming a custom can often lead to people skipping buys they would otherwise join. This is a very easy one to program, so nothing to be afraid of here!
The first step is to simply download the Bootmapper client found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3bn9flirkb49ahz/BootMapperClient.zip?dl=0
After downloading it and running the .exe (I'm on Windows, there is an OSX version as well) you should see something like this:
Once this is active you will press the key you want to remap, and it should get highlighted in red within the matrix. Simply click on the key you want to change it to from the selection of keys at the bottom. It should look like this, using Caps Lock as an example:
One more very important thing to point out is lighting controls. You will probably want to put these on the normal FN layer. RGB mode controls the SMDs on the PCB for underglow, and LED mode, LED BrUp, LED BrDN only affect in switch LEDs. the LED on/off affects both.
Moving on to lighting!
To access the lighting features (both under PCB SMDs and in-switch LED's) go to Options from the main tab selection. You should see this screen:
Now lets head back to the main tab to flash the new layout to the keyboard. Make sure "ps2avrGB & ps2avrGB_split" is selected as the target: