Hey guys – For some reason, I thought that if I added this to the "Post your BS boards here" topic, it'd go to the top of the list again so people would see it. But no. So I'm presuming to start a new thread here, to be sure I get to share it w/you. Cheers, A.
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A few days ago I was delighted to receive the Model F PC AT that Dorkvader modded for me with an ANSI-style Enter, modifiers and number pad! He'd started the project last year, but had to put it on hold when he realized he'd taken on too many projects to maintain his very high standards—
and suddenly found himself a full-time employee of a certain widely known computer company.
Several great
AT-mod projects have been documented here, so for most of you this is nothing new. Dork did such a great job, though, I had to share it—so thanks for indulging me.
The board arrived in a cool vintage Key Tronics box ("The
Responsive Input Company!"):
Everything was securely, neatly packed:
Dork was kind enough to include the original keys he'd replaced, including the number pad—as well as a set of sparkly-new Unicomp numpad keys, in case I ever wanted to use them in place of the bright yellow ones in the
GE Marquette medical set he sent me last year. With a tinge of poignancy, I realized this was likely to be the only time I'd ever receive three complete sets of numpad keys, all different, in the same day.
He also generously included a Soarer's adapter he'd made by adroitly wiring a
Teensy into a socketed box:
To accommodate the new bottom row, Dork swapped the F's wide spacebar with one from a Model M. The M's stabilizer wire is too thick for the F's retaining brackets, so he used wcass's clever "washer mod", fabricating the parts from Teflon:
Besides the obvious changes, there's no standard way to update the AT layout; it's a matter of taste. For those of you not familiar with it, here's the original layout (courtesy of Wikipedia):
...and here's the one I settled on, after moving some keys around myself:
Some people put Esc on the number pad, but I didn't think I could break my decades-long habit of reaching up and to the left. So Esc went where tilde ( ~) was—and since I'll use the number pad only for things like ASCII codes, not bookkeeping, tilde got the dot/Del key's spot.
I love the F's vintagey typography and gladly restored the original F numpad keys. I opted to replace the seldom (ever?) used Scroll Lock and Pause/Break with the post-AT F11-12 keys. (Hey, they have numbers in 'em, right?)
This is where the Soarer's comes in of course. As most of you know, the AT was the first IBM keyboard and the only Model F to use the standard PC protocol. So it doesn't need a Soarer's to be used with a PC. But it does add the ability to remap key codes so there'll actually be a
point to moving those caps around.
The back, with its simple s/n label:
Finally, the ANSI AT in action (along with my
$7 Chinese leather wrist rest):
It's an odd feeling taking a photo of your keyboard while you're using it to compose
a post about the keyboard. The M. C. Escher drawing comes to mind:
Unlike some peeps here, I could never choose a favorite between the Model M and F. I just feel lucky to enjoy IBM's first great buckling-spring implementation in such an up-to-date way.