geekhack
geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: sharktastica on Mon, 24 February 2025, 14:17:34
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A new Shark’s Wiki page - IBM Model M3! The keyboard and keypad for the early IBM notebook PS/2 Model L40 SX.
https://sharktastica.co.uk/wiki?id=modelm3 (https://sharktastica.co.uk/wiki?id=modelm3)
I say “new”… this wiki page was originally just the keypad and was written a while ago, not up to my present standards. Anywho, the IBM Personal System/2 L40 SX was perhaps the most well known of IBM’s pre-ThinkPad notebook laptops. It didn’t obtain much commercial success, but its keyboard was widely praised in the press at the time and in contemporary reviews by Nostalgia Nerd (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvocdnZWiWI&t=739s) and Wendell at Level1Techs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=732&v=xYqeI3Om1ew).
Its keyboard and keypad - IBM Model M3 - was the first vessel of IBM’s “buckling sleeve” keyswitches (https://sharktastica.co.uk/wiki?id=ibmbucklingsleeve), a major research interest of mine. The keyboard and keypad design were subsequently adapted to become IBM Model M4/M4-1 (IBM Space Saver Keyboard & Numeric Keypad) (https://sharktastica.co.uk/wiki?id=modelm4) and evolved into IBM Model M6/M6-1 (the first IBM ThinkPad Keyboards) (https://sharktastica.co.uk/wiki?id=modelm6). The L40 SX and its M3 represented a major shift in the Model M keyboard family, creating a lineage within it more suitable for portable computers but not yielding to traditional rubber dome designs as well. Obviously, how good they are is subjective (like anything), but I think it is hard to argue against how the ThinkPad’s early reputation for keyboards that endures today was built by laptops with M6/M6-1 keyboards - and there is no M6/M6-1 without M3!
(https://sharktastica.co.uk/resources/images/excerpts/pcmag199108_l40-sx.jpg)
(From PC Mag, August 1991)
(https://sharktastica.co.uk/resources/images/model_ms/shark_1396572_ibm.jpg)
(https://sharktastica.co.uk/resources/images/switches/ibm_buckling_sleeves_m4.jpg)
(https://sharktastica.co.uk/resources/images/keycaps/shark_1396572_ibm_texture.jpg)
Enjoy!