What a pleasant journey so far ...

[el_murdoque]

I thought I'd share this with you.
I found GH while I was hunting a mid nineties Acer keyboard of a specific sort and googled myself raw with little to no success.
Of course, the good people gathered here did provide me with specifics so I could actually search for model numbers instead of colour.
And as luck would have it, at the moment when I called off the search, I found that very board online. It was dirty and untested, with no price listed, so I offered ten bucks and the seller agreed. The board came to my home and got a good and deep cleaning (thanks again GH for telling me why the dishwasher would have been a bad idea), but it turned out that while it was the switch model I was looking for, It did not agree with my fingertips as much as I would have liked.
So I took the clean and tested board and offered it on ebay. The auction ended and I sold it with a sizeable profit. That very day, I found a Model M online. The asked price equalled my profit exactly (ebay earnings minus shipping minus what I paid for the acer), so I took it for a sign.
That Model M arrived this morning. A free keyboard. It turned out to be a Lexmark UK made M from May'94 with those double keycaps. I took it apart and found that while it had gathered a fair bit of fluff, it has spent its 26 years of service in a dry environment.

The metal back plate is free of rust and no evidence of liquids entering the board is to be found.
It cleaned up nicely and I just finished putting it back together after the keycaps finished drying (which took long).

The interesting thing is, that while I do know Model M's - I've typed on them when they were just the keyboard that came with the computer back in the early nineties,
I've not had hands-on contact with one in the more recent years. Taking one apart and reassembling it again made me get why there's so much love for them.
When people claim that these are built like tanks and made to outlast time itself, I now fully understand that statement.
The slope in the board, the enormous switches, the fat keycaps, the sheer thickness of the housing - all those features that keyboards have long since shed and probably will never offer again (apart from those nice products for well paying enthusiasts).
Those keycaps - the lettering. How sharp and beautiful it is - even for a new keyboard that has not withstood two decades of sun and fingertips.

I've had a few boards on my bench recently since I became interested in mechanical keyboards, but none did compare to that.
This makes me wonder how a Model F must feel in comparison. I've never thought about getting one of these, because frankly, I cannot do with that layout.

...but I will have to decide what to do with that Model M. I think it's too loud for me to really use, even though the 2 key rollover is not that critical.
I tried the most complex combo I could think of encountering while gaming, shift-walking to the front-right while jumping and reloading in Counter Strike, which would require the keys SHIFT, W, A, R and SPACE to register at the same time, which worked  without problems.

Maybe I should stress my luck and sell the Model M to look out for a board with complicated ALPS switches that will appear in an online listing for just the price of what I sold the M for?

[treeleaf64]

How much are you planning to sell it for?
That's great that you found the M, by the way.

[el_murdoque]

I'm thinking of auctioning it off, starting at €1.
That was what I did with the Acer, too.
I'll have to wait until March, though. Prices at the end of Feb are not that good because money is tight for too many people.
Yesterday, two model Ms sold on German Ebay. Both were late Scottish models (blue badge), both were described as working.
One guy was so bold to say it was 'only cleaned minimally to preserve the vintage patina' the other did not write anything in the description apart from that it was working.
The former went for €101, the latter for €42.


Maybe I'll use it for a bit before that. It takes some time, though - my home Keyboard is a Wooting Two and my work one is loaded with MX browns, both are a lot lighter than the M.
My fingers simply are not used to that weighting of the keys and the M is only fun when you're hacking at it with some force. There's no way of typing lightly and enjoying oneself IMO.
I think I'll have to dive a bit deeper into vintage keyboards and see if another looks like it might interest me. Mayhaps the Apple Extended II.

 

[fohat.digs]

This makes me wonder how a Model F must feel in comparison. I've never thought about getting one of these, because frankly, I cannot do with that layout.

The AT is not too odd, and the 122-key terminal is quite similar to ISO (although it is 10%-20% larger than an M).

But both can be modified to get very close to your desired layout if you are moderately good with your hands.

[Sintpinty]

I thought I'd share this with you.
I found GH while I was hunting a mid nineties Acer keyboard of a specific sort and googled myself raw with little to no success.
Of course, the good people gathered here did provide me with specifics so I could actually search for model numbers instead of colour.
And as luck would have it, at the moment when I called off the search, I found that very board online. It was dirty and untested, with no price listed, so I offered ten bucks and the seller agreed. The board came to my home and got a good and deep cleaning (thanks again GH for telling me why the dishwasher would have been a bad idea), but it turned out that while it was the switch model I was looking for, It did not agree with my fingertips as much as I would have liked.
So I took the clean and tested board and offered it on ebay. The auction ended and I sold it with a sizeable profit. That very day, I found a Model M online. The asked price equalled my profit exactly (ebay earnings minus shipping minus what I paid for the acer), so I took it for a sign.
That Model M arrived this morning. A free keyboard. It turned out to be a Lexmark UK made M from May'94 with those double keycaps. I took it apart and found that while it had gathered a fair bit of fluff, it has spent its 26 years of service in a dry environment.
(Attachment Link)
The metal back plate is free of rust and no evidence of liquids entering the board is to be found.
It cleaned up nicely and I just finished putting it back together after the keycaps finished drying (which took long).

The interesting thing is, that while I do know Model M's - I've typed on them when they were just the keyboard that came with the computer back in the early nineties,
I've not had hands-on contact with one in the more recent years. Taking one apart and reassembling it again made me get why there's so much love for them.
When people claim that these are built like tanks and made to outlast time itself, I now fully understand that statement.
The slope in the board, the enormous switches, the fat keycaps, the sheer thickness of the housing - all those features that keyboards have long since shed and probably will never offer again (apart from those nice products for well paying enthusiasts).
Those keycaps - the lettering. How sharp and beautiful it is - even for a new keyboard that has not withstood two decades of sun and fingertips.

I've had a few boards on my bench recently since I became interested in mechanical keyboards, but none did compare to that.
This makes me wonder how a Model F must feel in comparison. I've never thought about getting one of these, because frankly, I cannot do with that layout.

...but I will have to decide what to do with that Model M. I think it's too loud for me to really use, even though the 2 key rollover is not that critical.
I tried the most complex combo I could think of encountering while gaming, shift-walking to the front-right while jumping and reloading in Counter Strike, which would require the keys SHIFT, W, A, R and SPACE to register at the same time, which worked  without problems.

Maybe I should stress my luck and sell the Model M to look out for a board with complicated ALPS switches that will appear in an online listing for just the price of what I sold the M for?

sweet

[Maledicted]

The Model F is both smoother, crisper, and lighter, in terms of key feel. You would love it. People nearby may not.

You could get a white alps board for $40-60, no guarantee that the switches aren't dirty though. My last blue alps board ran me $140-ish, and the switches ... need help.

[treeleaf64]

The Model F is both smoother, crisper, and lighter, in terms of key feel. You would love it. People nearby may not.

You could get a white alps board for $40-60, no guarantee that the switches aren't dirty though. My last blue alps board ran me $140-ish, and the switches ... need help.

Yep, white Alps are a budget entry. A great budget entry, if you get the pine variant. They are a little too heavy, and they don't feel as refined as blue Alps. I have been playing around with them for a while, and when typing fast, a lot of effort is required to overcome the heavy tactility, so much so that sometimes my fingers don't press keys down all the way, resulting in missed actuations.

[el_murdoque]

...I ended up selling the Model M.
For typing to be fun on it, I needed to apply considerable force and this meant too much noise for my colleagues in the office, as well as for home use.
So, some cash was free again, but no vintage Alps board showed up. At least none that I liked.
So I went down an entirely different route. This showed up yesterday:



A 48 key ortholinear thing. A little bit bigger than my hand. It's a JJ40 PCB with Gateron black switches and PBT keycaps.
It's basically an ergonomic headache for me, who usually can't do well on anything short of a 104 key board.
I must admit, however, that it's a fun exercise wrapping my head around all this, tweaking the mapping in qmk and seeing that it can be made to work.
The positioning of the keys is a Nightmare, though. 

[envyy24]

No worries mate when you get use to this you would actually question why not all keyboards are made this way. Welcome to otho land and expect to never leave

[el_murdoque]

Can't yet comment on that. The combination of switches and keycaps feels nice, and qmk is a powerful toy.
It is quite a mission to accommodate the 104 keys of a full board with those 48, especially since one has to remember all the layers - but I am starting to manage.
Of course I am typing with ridiculous speed and precision since I miss all those keystrokes where a key is not lined up where muscle memory wants it to be - I'm enjoying myself doing so, however.

...I kinda wish I had stumbled over a keyboard with 5 rows, though ...

[el_murdoque]

...speaking of qmk: The only hassle I have is that my board+PC are set to ISO-DE and I have to do a bit of guesswork with the differences in the special keys.

however, I just found out that the backlighting also reacts to RGB commands.
So now, the lighting matches the keys. nice.