A Small Plea Against "Switch Harvesting"
First and foremost, I think that it should be said right out of the gate that you are entitled to do whatever you want to do on your own behalf and this article is not a provocation to fight with you about your decisions. However, in my pursuit of wanting to cover as many topics about switches as I possibly can, I realize I have not yet covered ‘switch harvesting’, one of the practices that I’m becoming less favorable towards as the years go on. Rather than trying to cover the history of this in a not so unbiased fashion, I figure I might as well try and convince you all as to why I feel this way about this process. After all, you’ve read my opinions more than once before on this website… In the earliest days of the custom mechanical keyboard hobby, years which start around 2008 and span to 2012, the vast majority of custom keyboards were built using switches had already had previous lives in other keyboards. Given that there were few if any switch manufacturers selling switches...
Mar 26, 2025
- Tried different usb c cables
- Tried different usb ports
- Tried different computers
I'm not sure what's going on but here's logs that I can provide: C:\Users\christian\Downloads\dropctrl>mdloader.exe --first --restart Massdrop Loader 1.03 Massdrop Loader Copyright (C) 2018 Massdrop Inc. This program is Free Software and has ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY Scanning for device for 60 seconds ..................60060306 Device port: COM7 (SAMD51J18A) Opening port 'COM7'... Success! 60060306Found MCU: SAMD51J18A Bootloader version: v2.20 Mar 27 2019 10:04:47 [ctrl] Applet file: applet-flash-samd51j18a.bin Applet Version: 1 Booting device... Success! Closing port... Success! C:\Users\christian\Downloads\dropctrl> The keyboard does not work at all even with the success logs. I'm not sure if this is helpful but I get no devices found when typing --list. C:\Users\christian\Downloads\dropctrl>mdloader.exe --list Massdrop Loader 1.03 Massdrop Loader Copyright (C) 2018 Massdrop Inc. This program is Free Software and has ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY Bootloader port listing ----------------------------- No devices found! C:\Users\christian\Downloads\dropctrl> I have had the ALT and had no issues configuring my board at all. I'm not sure if I should be concerned because the board should work right out of the box. Any help would be appreciated. And yes, I have already contacted Support.