DSS Microcomputer

DSS Microcomputer

A Digital Archaeology Tale from the Custer Vaults

Picture this: somewhere in a cluttered bedroom circa 1987, between viewings of The Princess Bride and debates about Sylvester McCoy's mysterious Seventh Doctor, a young programmer encounters the commanding presence of a BBC Microcomputer Model B. Its distinctive dark brown keyboard, crowned with that iconic row of red function keys, sits humming quietly—a gateway to digital worlds more compelling than any Choose Your Own Adventure book. Fast forward forty years, and here I am in our Custer workshop, holding the original brass legend inserts that once breathed life into those very keys.

While we never housed the actual machines, fate delivered us something more precious from our archives—the brass DNA of computing history itself. These aren't the exact same caps that launched a thousand careers (though here's a manufacturing secret: the sprue marks are in precisely the same locations, because good engineering is eternal). But here's where the tale takes a delightful turn: these colors aren't exactly the same as forty years ago, so we enlisted the help of superhands from our SP Discord (thanks again!), who graciously provided an original set for our color-matching séance. Each doubleshot legend emerges in carefully matched WFK White, VEA Olive, OB Red, and TAA Brown—colors our artisans obsessed over through seventeen iterations until we captured not just the hues, but the very soul of 1980s British computing optimism. There's something beautifully circular about recreating these legends in an era when ARM processors—those same chips that first hummed to life in the BBC's later models—now power the MacBooks we use to design keycap sets. Of course, we've included UKISO in the base set (because what kind of BBC tribute would skip the proper British layout?), plus a treasure trove of keys for all those wonderfully weird layouts that make our global keyboard community so delightfully diverse. Every key is hand-inspected by craftspeople who remember when computing meant something magical, delivering that perfect DSS profile balance between SA's towering presence and DSA's minimalist approach.