Model M - does anybody know what this is?

[fohat.digs]

Weird listing. I thought about bidding but my track record is stumbling lately.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/180985254573?item=180985254573&ViewItem=&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1123#shId

[AKIMbO]

I googled it a few hours ago and couldn't find anything relevant.  I'm as stumped as you are.  The spelling in the description section of the listing is throwing up all kinds of red flags though...

"ALL keys are visibol and thire

This keyboard is good for makeing offices look professional

....AND OLD COLECTIONS..."

[SmallFry]

I laughed at the discription. I'm not sure what it is... LOL!

[IvanIvanovich]

Actually not bad for Alps, it's not all big and extra bulky and real ANSI. Kind of looks like Alps OEM board.

[486]

Looks like BTC caps on an ALPS board. Odd. 99.8% of keyboards of this vintage that were Alps Blue would have sharp corned keycaps. So not Alps Blue. I have a feeling it is an Acer switch board.The case style is reminicent of Acer 6311 and the caps look similar (although they still look like BTC caps to me). Yep. I'm going Acer on this one.

[Magna224]

Its a forward electronics keyboard but it probably has complicated white ALPS. If you look closely it says made for ALPS electric on the back.

[486]

Its a forward electronics keyboard but it probably has complicated white ALPS. If you look closely it says made for ALPS electric on the back.

How can you tell it is a foward electronics board?

[Magna224]

I have taken one apart before because I was curious who made it.

[dorkvader]

Its a forward electronics keyboard but it probably has complicated white ALPS. If you look closely it says made for ALPS electric on the back.

How can you tell it is a foward electronics board?

You can look it up from the FCC-ID: F4ZFDA-102F

I also note that according to the paperwork, Forward Electronics in the OEM, and it appears like "Rockford Engineering Services" in St. Leonard, MD is the company that sells it?

[Computer-Lab in Basement]

The sound is better than a Model M??? That's doubtful...

[SmallFry]

ORLY? LoL!

[Internetlad]

I was this close to picking this up, but lack of winkey and the fact that shipping is more than the board kills it.

Even though I do love me some alps but I'd rather get a Focus 2001

[fohat.digs]

Having a more normal ANSI layout makes this more desirable to me than a Focus 2001, although it is probably not built as well as the  Focus.

$12.70 shipping is pretty good, that is realistically about as low as you could ship a full-sized board across the country.

[Internetlad]

I really like the Focus boards. Funny how they were basically a low-mid tier board back in the day and now, used, they're better than 98% of what's sold NIB.

[Magna224]

I would chose this over a Focus 2001 unless its a first revision Focus 2001.

[scytheR]

So this guy knows what a legend IBM Model M's are, but he can't spell 'visible' or 'there'. Interesting.

[Elrick]

So this guy knows what a legend IBM Model M's are, but he can't spell 'visible' or 'there'. Interesting.

You do know that English wouldn't be everyone's First Language........ 

[Quarzac]

I want this. If you guys bid on it, you're dead to me.

[Alessandro]

So he now put a picture on, the board has white alps.

[dorkvader]

white alps.... and doubleshot keycaps!

[Mugen]

lol this is going to be ugly

[486]

Look at the shipping to australia $75!   LULZ

[Internetlad]

Hmm. IS the sound of ALPS better than BS?

As much as I love ALPS. I'd say no.

BRB Keyboard Science.

EDIT: Nope.

Maybe better than a Unicomp M. They have a more metallic twang. ALPS just sounds like a plasticy click. vintage M's are a nice heavy plunk.

[dorkvader]

Maybe better than a Unicomp M. They have a more metallic twang. ALPS just sounds like a plasticy click. vintage M's are a nice heavy plunk.

How vintage are we talking, here? My January 1990 one didn't have a "plunk". Are you sure it's not the extra wear of a well-used old keyboard? My one was almost unused.

That said, I much prefer my unicomp (and especially my 6110668 ID#00363) to my ALPS-u-lator, or even my Siig minitouch monterey.

[Internetlad]

it's a 91. I think it's just the heavier plastic. The Unicomp I have (And i'm pretty sure got from you) seems to have a thinner plastic shell, so it might just be that it "sounds" thicker from the reverb.

the "Plunk" is a happy medium in between the stiff click of the ALPS and the "Tink" of my Uni M

[alvinliang]

should just look up the sn on google

[dorkvader]

should just look up the sn on google

We tried that first thing. It's not a real model M, so it doesn't have the same S/N info. Also, some real model M S/N's don't really return any results.

I googled it a few hours ago and couldn't find anything relevant.  I'm as stumped as you are.  The spelling in the description section of the listing is throwing up all kinds of red flags though...

"ALL keys are visibol and thire

This keyboard is good for makeing offices look professional

....AND OLD COLECTIONS..."

[fohat.digs]

I won this keyboard. When I get it, I will write up my findings.

Shortly after I posted this thread, I regretted it and put in a lowball snipe at $25. After interest started heating up, I assumed that it would be bid up to at least $40-50 and I assumed that I didn't have a chance at it.

After all the hot air, nobody else actually bid over $18, and I was shocked to win it.

I have not had good luck on ebay lately, so maybe I will get something nice here.

Let you know in a few days.

[Quarzac]

I won this keyboard. When I get it, I will write up my findings.

Shortly after I posted this thread, I regretted it and put in a lowball snipe at $25. After interest started heating up, I assumed that it would be bid up to at least $40-50 and I assumed that I didn't have a chance at it.

After all the hot air, nobody else actually bid over $18, and I was shocked to win it.

I have not had good luck on ebay lately, so maybe I will get something nice here.

Let you know in a few days.

I'm not happy with you, fohat.digs. Not happy at all. You see that $18 bid put in fractions of a second prior to yours? That was mine! I waited on that auction to close so I could manually snipe it, only to lose! If you find you don't care for it, let me know.

[fohat.digs]

Well, I suppose that I should apologize, but I don't get it. Would you have found this keyboard at all, on your own, if I hadn't posted it? When I find something cool that I do not plan to bid on, I post it here as fair game for everybody else. I have done this dozens of times and helped out a lot of people.

Occasionally, I have changed my mind and regretted publicly advertising something that I later decided that I wanted. That is what happened here. After your post and a couple of others, I might have gone back and cancelled my snipe, but, realistically, I figured that my paltry $25 was going to get left in the dust anyway, so I did not bother.

What does "manually snipe" mean? As I remember, the auction ended in the middle of the night for me, and I was asleep in bed at the time.

Conventional bidding on ebay is absurd. It is like a public auction with everybody yelling out numbers. With blind and silent auctions, whatever else they are called, you just wait for the dust to settle and see who bid the most.

Like it or not, sniping renders the public component of ebay bidding largely moot. My recommendation is to go to Auction Sniper and put in the highest number that you are willing to pay for an item. You will get it, or not, all fair and square.

I hate game playing, and that is how I see ebay without sniping. I was willing to pay $25 + shipping, no more. If I had lost it at $26, I would not have blinked, even though I knew that I was only bidding against one other person. What if he topped out at $27? Would I have gone $28? You can't think like that.

So, what I am wondering is: If you were willing to pay $26 for it, why didn't you do it?

[fohat.digs]

Moderators -

If you have been following this, and/or if you care, I would be interested to hear a 3rd party opinion "from the experts" on this chain of events.

When someone feels slighted it is always unfortunate, and I have always tried to be a good citizen in this community.

On many occasions I have considered not posting any more "Great Finds" but I feel that it is generally a very positive and helpful thing to do.

Thanks, Harry

[Mugen]

Guys, stop fighting >_< just let us know what you think when you get it please.

[Krogenar]

fo.hat - can't wait to see your findings on the keyboard. As for the moderator comment -- I didn't read it as being an actual 'I have a problem with you' -- seemed in jest to me. Damn you text, for not imparting proper meaning!

[fohat.digs]

The "Great Finds" section has always perplexed me, and I keep trying to understand the nuances of how it should operate.

If I am going to bid on something, I want to keep it a secret to keep the price down.

If I am not going to bid on it, I would post it here so somebody else could have a crack at it.

** Those 2 scenarios are easy. **


If someone else was going stealth, and I post it here, then I mess them up.

If I change my mind and go for it myself, then I have created competition.

** Those 2 scenarios are probably disappointing, for somebody. **


When someone claims "dibs" on an item, it might be polite for everyone else to clear off altogether, but how do you gauge the desires of all the participants - except by how much they are willing to pay?

What if one person was willing to pay $18, another $25, and another $100? Should the $18 guy get it because he called "first!" before most other participants even knew it was there?

These are rhetorical or existential questions. What I want to understand is the consensus feeling of the forum, so that I might adjust my future behavior accordingly.

Obviously, I spend time thinking about these ethical questions.

When I am selling, 90%+ of the time, I set a fixed price, high, and lower it 10% per week until I sell. That is the best way I know to get top dollar for my item, and the process is always transparent. Auctions are wildly unpredictable.

As a buyer, low-start auctions can be a good way to get bargains, but you have to accept the risk of bidding/sniping high, or else losing, most of the time, to somebody who wanted the item more.

[Quarzac]

Well, I suppose that I should apologize, but I don't get it. Would you have found this keyboard at all, on your own, if I hadn't posted it? When I find something cool that I do not plan to bid on, I post it here as fair game for everybody else. I have done this dozens of times and helped out a lot of people.

Occasionally, I have changed my mind and regretted publicly advertising something that I later decided that I wanted. That is what happened here. After your post and a couple of others, I might have gone back and cancelled my snipe, but, realistically, I figured that my paltry $25 was going to get left in the dust anyway, so I did not bother.

What does "manually snipe" mean? As I remember, the auction ended in the middle of the night for me, and I was asleep in bed at the time.

Conventional bidding on ebay is absurd. It is like a public auction with everybody yelling out numbers. With blind and silent auctions, whatever else they are called, you just wait for the dust to settle and see who bid the most.

Like it or not, sniping renders the public component of ebay bidding largely moot. My recommendation is to go to Auction Sniper and put in the highest number that you are willing to pay for an item. You will get it, or not, all fair and square.

I hate game playing, and that is how I see ebay without sniping. I was willing to pay $25 + shipping, no more. If I had lost it at $26, I would not have blinked, even though I knew that I was only bidding against one other person. What if he topped out at $27? Would I have gone $28? You can't think like that.

So, what I am wondering is: If you were willing to pay $26 for it, why didn't you do it?

You and your logic and reason and what not. A good point- I almost definitely would not have noticed it had you not posted it.

For future reference, if I say manually snipe, I mean I'm sitting at my computer bashing keys as fast as I can to try and get the last bid in. I don't like using sniping programs. They feel like cheating to me. That being said, the person who said the comment was in jest was correct- the same can be said for most of my comments in this thread- while I would have liked to have this keyboard, it's just a keyboard. No big deal. I will hold no grudges merely because I lost an eBay auction- it is not the first, nor will it be the last.

Please continue to post Great Finds- it shows your exceptional character- I for one, cannot claim the same; I would likely not post an item I was interested in buying. The fact that you spread the knowledge of such auctions to a community you know will be interested in purchasing it as well is admirable.

P.S. I was shooting for around $30 shipped for this board- I have been spending too much money anyways, especially for a jobless college student, so I should probably thank you!

[fohat.digs]

Sniping is not cheating.

If the basketball rules were changed so that you could run with the ball, would you continue to dribble because it felt more "honorable" to do it the old-fashioned way?

Ebay always wants you to bid high, bid early, and bid often. Don't.

If you put in $18 with 3 days to go, and somebody went to $19, would have given up at that point?

I love sniping, because with everybody in "stealth" mode, whatever driving up of price is being done, it is all happening in a "whoosh" at the end, and I do not have to be in attendance.

Considering that a "cycle" of looking, typing, submitting, refreshing, and seeing results is 3-5 seconds, minimum, or twice that, if you are not hitting your mark within the last few seconds of the close of the auction, a sniper will almost always beat you.

So, if you are imagining that you can manually put yourself ahead of a snipe, dream on. Maybe once in a hundred.

And, of course, conventional ebay bids go in after all snipes, so if it is life-and-death, you should just put in $1,000 as a conventional ebay bid and ensure your win.

I am glad to know that your feelings are not hurt.

[alaricljs]

Of course sniping is not cheating, even when you do it the hard way like Quarzac and sit in front of the PC to do it.

I do it the hard way as well, mostly because I do it so infrequently (and with 100% success ) that it's not worth learning how to use some service to do it for me.

[fohat.digs]

Auction Sniper is great, they charge something like 1% of the sale price, with 25 cents minimum and $10 maximum, and only if you win.

And, you can be asleep and win an auction without knocking yourself out.

How do you expect to react perfectly and hit a time slot of a very few seconds with just the right bid?

Not really humanly possible, in my opinion, if serious snipers are involved.

[Quarzac]

Auction Sniper is great, they charge something like 1% of the sale price, with 25 cents minimum and $10 maximum, and only if you win.

And, you can be asleep and win an auction without knocking yourself out.

How do you expect to react perfectly and hit a time slot of a very few seconds with just the right bid?

Not really humanly possible, in my opinion, if serious snipers are involved.

I managed to get in my bid of I think $17, get outbid, and bit $18 within 4 seconds of the end of the auction. Looking at the bid history, the flaw was that my PC didn't tell me the top bid was $18 until I hit at that. It was actually at $18 a second prior to my $17 bid. So, had I bid $19 or $20, I likely would have actually won. So, at least I learned something about how to better snipe eBay auctions. I need to use the whole one-click bid system to make sure I'm totally up to date on the price.

I don't think sniping is cheating- I do it myself. I just personally don't use automated snipers, even though I probably should, mainly because I feel like I won a competition if I do it manually. For the record, I have won before! I like to think I'm pretty good at it!

But, whatever! It's a keyboard. Let us know what you think of it, maybe take it apart when you get it, see if you can find any information on it so maybe I can find one too!

[fohat.digs]

Your technique depends on getting between my snipe and closing, since I was set to go up another $7, if need be, as well as hoping that no one else is making a higher conventional bid, which would trump us all.

You won't know what my snipe was until after it is made, then you have to calculate and react. 4 seconds for 2 iterations is some seriously quick timing, when you are trusting the internet and all the switches in between your fingers and ebay's core to be almost instantaneous.

Makes me think it must look a lot like my son shooting aliens on one of his games.

Just pay Auction Sniper the quarter and go to bed, I say.

[AKIMbO]

You  cannot call dibs on an ebay auction.  Wtf is wrong with people.

[Krogenar]

As for the 'Great Finds' section --- I figure that's useful. If I saw something that I know I couldn't get or couldn't afford, etc. -- then I would post it there. People might post it there just to tap into the hivemind here, and find out what something might be. At any rate, at least a geekhacker ended up grabbing it, as opposed to some other person.

[samwisekoi]

Hmmmm.

For the past couple of years or so I have been using "Buy it Now" exclusively. Reading the thread above, I begin to understand why.

I go to eBay for the global span of sellers. Everything that can be sold is there, but only the sellers know ifthe prices are "good". Thus, to my mind anyhow, eBay ceases to be a source of great deals. Nowadays it is just a great deal of sources.

One of a kind items and charity/fundraising are different, of course. But for everything else, eBay auctions are an evolving entity designed to optimize the outcome for eBay and no one else.

So dribble, travel or just watch the show. To each his own.

The people inside a community are the ones who build trust, and it is inside here that playing by the same rules matters.
 
On eBay, snipe, don't snipe or don't play. But for sure don't expect acts of kindness from strangers.

Expect them in auctions IN HERE.

Just my $.02

 - Ron |samwisekoi

[fohat.digs]

Several years ago I sold a big part of my record collection on ebay. It was a monumental effort that took about 3-4 months in which I grossed about $14K and netted about $10K when it was all over. This was selling roughly 800 LPs mostly from the 1960s and 1970s, half jazz and half rock.

I ran them all as straight auctions, and usually started at $10 or $20, but occasionally at $50 or more.

There were records that I got $100 for and was expecting $10, and records I thought that I would get $100 for and couldn't sell at $10. Overall, I can't complain, but if I did it again, it would be completely different.

Everything would be Buy-It-Now, starting at the highest price I could reasonably expect to get, and dropping 10% per week until it sold. Considering the difficulty of packaging, etc, I would not bother selling a record for less than $10. Back then, I could ship domestic for about $6 and international for about $12. It would probably be twice that, now.

Naturally, this new scheme would allow ebay/Paypal to extract its maximum fees from me, but it would make the whole process transparent and straightforward.

Unless an item is quite rare and/or you really don't know what it is worth, there is no point (for a seller) in running an auction, except that ebay's fees are much lower. And using a low starting point but putting a reserve on it is totally silly.

I always prefer Buy-It-Now for its transparency and certainty, but low-start auctions do allow for the occasional bargain if you are the buyer.

Whatever else you think about ebay, it has leveled the playing field and made the whole planet a single marketplace.

Those of us who have bought and sold extensively get an intuition for the dynamic. Not to say that we are not occasionally completely surprised!

[Internetlad]

If the basketball rules were changed so that you could run with the ball, would you continue to dribble because it felt more "honorable" to do it the old-fashioned way?

I still use mostly stock weapons on TF2 because all the unlocks are for scrubs.

You  cannot call dibs on an ebay auction.  Wtf is wrong with people.

Yeah this argument is silly. I think Quarzac was just initially surprised/upset he lost the bid, saw that it was fohat and made a knee-jerk reaction to post a Y U DO in the thread. He doesn't even seem upset now.

[fohat.digs]

All is cool.

Quarzac and I have now moved on to exchanging friendly tips on modding Model Fs.

I am going to close this silly thread.

Look for a review thread on the white Alps keyboard in about a week.