Hmm... Something I have not noticed or reflected on before in my ISO AEKII:
The bottom of the case contains moulded depressions for the switch pins on rows B and C. There are also other depressions for jumpers' pins on the PCB. The bottom is thicker around them, but thinner at the bottom row.
I tested with a piece of paper, and found imprints from the pins, so I can confirm that they indeed reach down into these dimples.
This restricts where to put the Alps pins on these two rows: north only.
To fit anything else (such as Cherry MX which also has a centre pin), you would have to make additional dimples with a Dremel.
There is now a choice between losing ISO or flipping Cherry MX upside-down and losing compatibility with silencing clips. I'd vote for the latter because I think there are more ISO users interested in this than people who'd would be interested in dremelling in their case and put Cherry MX
with silencing clips on these rows. (Personally, I think MX could be thrown away altogether because there are
slider-adapters and
Nexus sliders if you want MX keycaps, but no Alps-compatible sliders for Cherry MX that I know of if you are just after the Cherry MX switch feel)
I suppose that the new PCB won't have through-hole diodes or jumpers, but be double-sided with vias and SMD components.
This means that SMD diodes would need to go on the top side or be moved up quite a lot.
It looks like my AEKII case bottom is for both ISO and ANSI. But how is the inside of the AEK case bottom?
