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Enthusiast Resurrects IBM's Legendary 'Model F' Keyboard (popularmechanics.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Popular Mechanics: You may not know the Model F by name, but you know it by sound -- the musical thwacking of flippers slapping away. The sound of the '80s office. The IBM Model F greeting the world in 1981 with a good ten pounds of die-cast zinc and keys that crash down on buckling metal springs as they descend. It's a sensation today's clickiest keyboards chase, but will never catch. And now it's coming back. The second coming of the high-quality Model F (not to be confused with its more affordable plastic successor, the Model M) isn't a throwback attention grab from IBM, nor a nostalgia play from Big Keyboard. Instead, it's the longtime work of a historian in love with the retro keyboard's unparalleled sound and feel, but frustrated by the limitations of actual decades-old tech.
The Model F Keyboards project, now taking preorders for the new line of authentic retro-boards, was started by Joe Strandberg, a Cornell University grad who's taken up keyboard wizardry as a nights-and-weekends hobby. He started as a collector and restorer of genuine Model F keyboards -- originally produced from 1981 to 1994 -- a process that familiarized him with their virtues and their flaws... Working with a factory in China, Strandberg has carefully overseen the reproduction process one step at time, from the springs to the unique powder-coating on the keyboard's zinc case. Despite the expense (Strandberg estimates spending $100,000 to revive the tooling necessary for the production run), it was the only viable option given the kind of abuse your average keyboard takes on a daily basis. "With 3D printing," he says, "the keyboard wouldn't last a year."
The first prototypes have just left the assembly line, and he's already racked up over a quarter of a million dollars in pre-orders. Does anyone else fondly remember IBM's hefty and trusty old keyboards?
The Model F Keyboards project, now taking preorders for the new line of authentic retro-boards, was started by Joe Strandberg, a Cornell University grad who's taken up keyboard wizardry as a nights-and-weekends hobby. He started as a collector and restorer of genuine Model F keyboards -- originally produced from 1981 to 1994 -- a process that familiarized him with their virtues and their flaws... Working with a factory in China, Strandberg has carefully overseen the reproduction process one step at time, from the springs to the unique powder-coating on the keyboard's zinc case. Despite the expense (Strandberg estimates spending $100,000 to revive the tooling necessary for the production run), it was the only viable option given the kind of abuse your average keyboard takes on a daily basis. "With 3D printing," he says, "the keyboard wouldn't last a year."
The first prototypes have just left the assembly line, and he's already racked up over a quarter of a million dollars in pre-orders. Does anyone else fondly remember IBM's hefty and trusty old keyboards?
Does it come with an authentic XT connector so I have to use XT>PS/2>USB so I can use it with my modern computer?
Some connoisseurs find that the Model F's mechanism has a somewhat nicer feel than the Model M's.
Because the sensing is capacitive and not using a measly membrane, the mechanism is more durable and allows for N-key rollover.
Also, Unicomp does not make the Model M in a compact form factor (relatively speaking). IBM used to have a Space-Saving Keyboard back in the day, but vintage "SSK"s on the second-hand market are quite sought-after and therefore pricey.
The build-quality of the buckling spring keyboards has also gradually gone down throughout the years. The Model F keyboards of old had case parts of parts of metal. Even the first Model M keyboards weight about half a kg (about a lb) more than those Model M keyboards made by Unicomp (and the last IBM-branded ones before that).
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Buckling springs were a cost reduction over the ultimate keyboard design - which was Keyboard D and associated. Those were the "beam spring" keyboards that shipped with the IBM 3278, IBM 3279 and so on. Absolutely fantastic keyboards, wonderful touch, a near perfect force/displacement profile. They were quiet - so quiet, we had to put an electric clicker into the keyboards, software selectable so typists could hear the keystrokes.
I had one for years and years. I had an interface that supplied it with the +8.5v, +5vand -2.2v it needed, took its parallel output and mapped it to an ASCII symbol set. I had one wired to a 6809 Forth machine for a few years, but it fell into disrepair when the IBM PC arrived, and suddenly I had a C compiler to code with.
The Cherry mechanicals certainly beat your basic rubber domes; and have become conveniently widely available; but they are a completely different type of keyswitch than used in either the model F or model M. Given the price, you'd really, really, have to care; but the differences aren't confined to a more industrial enclosure.