2023-12-10 I bought a keyboard

I was at the Swiss Mechanical Keyboard Meetup. I wanted to get rid of my keyboards and instead I bought one. 😓

Swiss Mechanical Keyboard

@xtaran@chaos.social's table with colourful keyboards and a MNT Reform laptop in the middle:

2023-12-10-keyboards-1.jpg

@deshipu@fosstodon.org's table with a lot of very flat keyboards with few keys, some of them steno keyboards:

2023-12-10-keyboards-2.jpg

Keyboards by Nicolas and Valerio:

2023-12-10-keyboards-3.jpg

Sam's keyboards:

2023-12-10-keyboards-4.jpg

This is the keyboard I bought from Sam:

2023-12-10-keyboards-5.jpg

It is labelled as Monsgeek M6, KTT Matcha, GMK DMG Clones.

Monsgeek M6

Right now my fingers are confused and seemed to expect the Atreus layout I had been using recently, at least as far as the thumbs go.

I get the feeling that not all keys work as intended, though. The right Ctrl key ~~has no effect~~ is a layer switch that enables < and > to control the volume, for example. The left Alt key is GUI. The right Alt key ~~has no effect~~ had a bent pin on their switch. The App key ~~has no effect~~ had a bent pin on their switch. The App key is actually Alt. The ] and = keys ~~have no effect~~ had a bent pin on their switches. The Volume Up key is mapped to Delete. The Volume Down key is mapped to Prior. The Mute Key is mapped to Next.

Hm.

As it turns out, the problem was the firmware. My guess is that it was too old.

So here's what I did:

• download `monsgeek_m6_via.bin` from the VIA site
• download QMK Toolbox
• install it and have it install all the drivers
• plug the keyboard in while Esc is being pressed
• pick the firmware downloaded and flash it

the VIA site

QMK Toolbox

	
QMK Toolbox 0.2.2+0fcc8d2be51846956c2fc4edad6362c194d6b2ca (https://qmk.fm/toolbox)
	
Supported bootloaders:
	
- ARM DFU (APM32, Kiibohd, STM32, STM32duino) and RISC-V DFU (GD32V) via dfu-util (http://dfu-util.sourceforge.net/)
	
- Atmel/LUFA/QMK DFU via dfu-programmer (http://dfu-programmer.github.io/)
	
- Atmel SAM-BA (Massdrop) via Massdrop Loader (https://github.com/massdrop/mdloader)
	
- BootloadHID (Atmel, PS2AVRGB) via bootloadHID (https://www.obdev.at/products/vusb/bootloadhid.html)
	
- Caterina (Arduino, Pro Micro) via avrdude (http://nongnu.org/avrdude/)
	
- HalfKay (Teensy, Ergodox EZ) via Teensy Loader (https://pjrc.com/teensy/loader_cli.html)
	
- LUFA/QMK HID via hid_bootloader_cli (https://github.com/abcminiuser/lufa)
	
- WB32 DFU via wb32-dfu-updater_cli (https://github.com/WestberryTech/wb32-dfu-updater)
	
- LUFA Mass Storage
	
Supported ISP flashers:
	
- AVRISP (Arduino ISP)
	
- USBasp (AVR ISP)
	
- USBTiny (AVR Pocket)
	
Auto-flash enabled
	
Auto-flash disabled

WB32 DFU device connected (WinUSB): (Undefined Vendor) WB Device in DFU Mode (342D:DFA0:0100)
Attempting to flash, please don't remove device
> wb32-dfu-updater_cli.exe --toolbox-mode --dfuse-address 0x08000000 --download "C:\Users\asc\Downloads\monsgeek_m6_via.bin"
> ----------------------------------------
> C:\Users\asc\Downloads\monsgeek_m6_via.bin file opened
> ----------------------------------------
> Found DFU
> Opening DFU capable USB device ...
> Device ID 342d:dfa0
> ----------------------------------------
> The device bootloader version: 0.4
> Chip id: 0x3A50E980
> Flash size: 256 KBytes
> Sram size: 36 KBytes
> ----------------------------------------
> Start Download ...
> Download block start address: 0x08000000
> Download block size: 39884 Bytes
> Writing ...
> OK
> Download completed!
Flash complete
WB32 DFU device disconnected (WinUSB): (Undefined Vendor) WB Device in DFU Mode (342D:DFA0:0100)

Then return to the VIA site with a browser that supports the USB stuff, so either Chrome or Edge 😭 and configure the keyboard. And *now* it works.

VIA site

​#Keyboard