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Do-It-Yourself Steampunk Keyboard

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the because-you-can dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Who said there's no use for your old IBM "M Series" keyboards anymore? This creative fellow shows us step by step how to convert the keyboards of yesteryear into keyboards of an even further distant, fictional time. H. G. Wells would be proud."

10 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. Keyboard by MattSparkes · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I've been looking for one of those for ages, I want to use it standard. Modern keyboards just don't make the right noise...

    --
    Matthew Sparkes
    1. Re:Keyboard by maxume · · Score: 4, Funny

      Maybe he meant that he looks in his magic cupboard everyday but it never has one?

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    2. Re:Keyboard by SMQ · · Score: 5, Informative

      They're still being manufactured by Unicomp; same layout, same technology. Plus, they come in black!

      --
      SMQ 90AE4B2BC4F6BEAF7340F0B40BA2DEF7340F6BC2D0392
    3. Re:Keyboard by R2.0 · · Score: 4, Informative

      My guess is it's your motherboard, not the keyboard. Some later motherboards don't adhere to the original standards - kinda like the "lame serial port" problem in some laptops.

      Drop the guy at http://www.clickykeyboards.com/ a line - he's quite helpful. They also have an adapter that will convert the PS/2 plug to USB, which might be a way around your problem.

      --
      "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
  2. Mirror Dot by A+Name+Similar+to+Di · · Score: 4, Informative

    Since I already can't get to the site...there's a mirror dot here.

  3. Re:No Use... by saskboy · · Score: 4, Funny

    "I still clunk away at my IBM model M keyboard every night...
    Only problem is my neighbors complain of the noise"

    How do you get your keyboard to moan, "oooh, oooh, like that, give me more?" That's quite the hack.

    --
    Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
  4. Re:but by value_added · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But does it still make that super loud clicky noise when you type?

    Even if it doesn't, it would definitely go a long way to training people to avoid the carpal-tunnel-inducing-typo-generating bad habit of resting their wrists on the keyboard.

    For anyone who never learned to type in a typing class on a real typewriter, I'll point out that most everyone who finishes such a course ends up typing at about 90wpm. I enrolled on a lark (to meet girls, actually, but they all ended up resenting me because I typed faster than they did), but the habits drilled into me I keep to this day.

    Take that Mavis Beacon. Now get off my lawn.

    Great looking keyboard at any rate. What's missing is a big magnifying screen like those found in Terry Gilliam's Brazil. And some pneumatic tubes. Gotta have pneumatic tubes -- you can impress your friends and family and have fun scaring the shit out of the dog at the same time.

  5. Steampunk? by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 4, Funny

    Where do you load in the coal?

    --
    Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
  6. Re:but by garcia · · Score: 4, Funny

    I spent my time harassing the teacher by writing BASIC programs on the Apple ]['s that made the computer beep and pause and repeat. Installing it on 25 computers to go "BEEP" all the way around the room and then start over again was fun until I got an hour of detention for each computer.

    The only thing I learned in that class was that programming in BASIC sent you to detention.

  7. Re:Brazil by Bastard+of+Subhumani · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's because his server ran out of coal.

    --
    Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.