Thrift stores and yard sales are great if you drive around a lot anyway.
Yeah, I'm not on the road all the time anyway, so I pretty much have to use my spare time for the 'quest'. This past weekend I went to ten different tag sales and estate sales -- only two keyboards, but not buckling spring, or anything interesting.
I am in outside sales, and my driving causes me to pass at least a dozen of each a month. I stop in when I have a couple of extra minutes, make a very quick circuit, and then move on.
That's perfect. I'm thinking of making trips to the dump to check out the ditched computers, and just keeping my eyes peeled. Enlisted some family and friends to keep an eye out for old keyboards as well. I have a brother-in-law who loves a good tag sale and he's on the lookout as well.
When you go out on a quest, you are sure to be disappointed 98% of the time.
You are correct. But if it was easy then what would be the point, right?
I've since purchased my second Model M (this time from eBay, as opposed to the first, which was through clickykeyboards.) for home use. It arrived in good condition, but ot as good as the clickykeyboards keyboard which was immaculate. This second keyboard has a right shift that should stick, and a spacebar that pinged and had to be hit twice to register.
I hummed the MacGuyver theme, and swapped the 'Ctrl' keys (seemed like the right shift worked, but was a scraping the 'Ctrl' key) and this fixed it. The spacebar needed removing and just some light tweaking and now it's perfect. But scary there for a moment.
So now I've got two, but I still want to see how just how early a Model M I can find (or buy) -- silly, I know -- and I'm also contemplating a Model M Terminal (122 keys) just because it looks frickin' awesome. Just a monstrous looking keyboard. The Model F looks a bit out there even for me. I just want gobs of keys to remap, and the 122 Model M looks like just the trick. I'm a little leery of putting together Soarer's converter to make it work. I'm not that experienced with electronics.
Fohat, just how difficult is it to put together a converter?
PS - the same goes for ebay. use Auction Sniper and put in very lowball bids. occasionally you will get lucky.
The wife is giving me mild stinkeye over this keyboard business already. Nevermind that she has a Russian Doll-style purse collection (a purse inside a purse, inside another purse, which is inside yet another purse) but I figure if I torture her with enough tag sales she'll eventually crack.
