BUCKLING SPRING MASTER RACE!

"Nibby" (nibby68) 03/29/2018 at 13:30 • Filed to: None

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Pair o’ buckling spring keyboards. Top one is IBM made by Lexmark 42H1292 Bottom is a Unicomp (PS2 connector)

Unicomp one has win keys since I use it on my main desktop.

sticker

IBM Model M

Sticker

Unicomp + Steelseries Rival mouse

IBM/Lexmark keyboard

IBM/Lexmark keyboard with Kensington trackball mouse

lone_liberal > Nibby 03/29/2018 at 13:36

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When I worked for Keytronics long, long ago I liked the big specialized keyboards we built for industrial use. They were absolute tanks but had a great feel to them.

Aremmes > Nibby 03/29/2018 at 13:36

2

You’re doing the Lord’s work.

Nibby > lone_liberal 03/29/2018 at 13:37

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keytronics were also really good keyboards

Yowen - not necessarily not spaghetti and meatballs > Nibby 03/29/2018 at 13:37

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So my friend yesterday goes (on Discord)“I think I’m going to get one of those Corsair gaming keyboards, they aren’t that much”

To which I say “what do you consider not much?”

He casually responds “just over a hundred bucks”

So I go on to say i consider that a lot for a keyboard, especially considering I just nabbed a generic Dell keyboard from home for my gaming computer. Which led me to conclude/wonder “how could I as a casual gamer have any benefit from a mechanical keyboard? Is it really worth it?”

Decay buys too many beaters > Nibby 03/29/2018 at 13:38

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Yessssss.

I wish I could bring my Unicomp classic to work, but I get enough crap for my Cherry G80-3000. I don’t think they could handle the Unicomp

aberson Bresident of the FullyAssed Committe > Nibby 03/29/2018 at 13:42

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i can hear them over the internet

Nibby > Decay buys too many beaters 03/29/2018 at 13:42

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you work with a bunch o’ plebeians

Nibby > Yowen - not necessarily not spaghetti and meatballs 03/29/2018 at 13:43

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yeah gaming keyboards and mice can get quite expensive

i find a lot of the gaming keyboards, especially ones with cherry red switches, to be uncomfortable

Nibby > aberson Bresident of the FullyAssed Committe 03/29/2018 at 13:43

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i hope i am making music to your ears

Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To > Nibby 03/29/2018 at 13:46

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That IBM/trackball combo is the BUSINESS.

Chariotoflove > Nibby 03/29/2018 at 13:49

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TheTurbochargedSquirrel > Yowen - not necessarily not spaghetti and meatballs 03/29/2018 at 13:51

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$100 isn’t much in the grand scheme of Mechanical Keyboards. My current board was $140. I have already spent $200 on the board I am building and I haven’t even bought a PCB or case yet (ok, I could have saved ~$45 on the keycaps but I wanted to get enough to cover any layout I might want to put them on while the group buy was still open). It’s not hard to spend $400-500 on a custom keyboard if you choose to. The way I see it I am working with my keyboard and mouse all day and will spend more money to improve that experience.

That said you can do a lot better than a Corsair in the $100-150 range.

Nibby > Chariotoflove 03/29/2018 at 13:51

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*shudders*

Nibby > Jake - Has Bad Luck So You Don't Have To 03/29/2018 at 13:51

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Thanks!

TheTurbochargedSquirrel > Nibby 03/29/2018 at 13:52

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One day I am going to get a 122 key IBM. I need a battleship for my battlestation.

Decay buys too many beaters > Nibby 03/29/2018 at 13:54

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I do :(

One of my coworkers, offered me one of their old Logitech boards because
“its wireless!” and
“it’s so much quieter too!”

C62030 > Nibby 03/29/2018 at 13:54

1

BLACK ALPS MASTER RACE

Nibby > C62030 03/29/2018 at 13:55

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those old Dell ones are very good too

Nibby > Decay buys too many beaters 03/29/2018 at 13:55

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you should beat that coworker with a Model M

Nibby > TheTurbochargedSquirrel 03/29/2018 at 13:56

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good luck finding one in good shape and not the price of a kidney

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Nibby 03/29/2018 at 13:59

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I had a couple of those. Noisy, but great action.

Yowen - not necessarily not spaghetti and meatballs > Nibby 03/29/2018 at 14:03

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Ah I see, and I just don’t see how a gaming keyboard would make me better at gaming than a regular keyboard. I just don’t understand. Haha. Maybe I need to try it to understand?

Yowen - not necessarily not spaghetti and meatballs > TheTurbochargedSquirrel 03/29/2018 at 14:05

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Oh gotcha. To me it seems it could make sense if you type all day, like if you are an editor or a novelist. But for gaming? Especially if it’s the type of games where WASD is mostly what you use. I just don’t see the value.

punkgoose17 > Nibby 03/29/2018 at 14:05

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I cannot figure out how to tell if a keyboard is good. I grabbed a free old ps2 keyboard at work because it seems better than my $10 home keyboard, but I am really not sure.

TheTurbochargedSquirrel > Nibby 03/29/2018 at 14:07

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That’s the challenge.

Aremmes > Chariotoflove 03/29/2018 at 14:15

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There are icons on the screen. WHY DUPLICATE THEM ON THE KEYBOARD?!?

Nibby > punkgoose17 03/29/2018 at 14:18

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really it’s all about personal preference. it’s subjective

benjrblant > Chariotoflove 03/29/2018 at 14:19

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I can feel the lack of haptic feedback. It makes me disappointed for the future of humanity.

TheTurbochargedSquirrel > Yowen - not necessarily not spaghetti and meatballs 03/29/2018 at 14:19

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For me the biggest thing is that you don’t have to bottom out the keys on a mechanical keyboard like you do with a standard rubber dome, saving me a ton of finger fatigue.

Mechanical keyboards can also be designed to support n-key rollover meaning that you can push as many keys as you want at once and it will correctly register all of them. The nature of a rubber dome keyboard is such that it is only guaranteed that you can press 2 keys at once with no issues. Trying to press 3 keys at once can result in either the keyboard ignoring the additional input or possibly additional keys appearing as pressed when they are not (this is called ghosting). Mechanical keyboards are popular for gaming because you know that your inputs are going to be correctly sent to the computer, regardless of what those inputs are.

Aremmes > punkgoose17 03/29/2018 at 14:23

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Anything that helps you type more quickly and/or with less effort counts. People like these buckling-spring keyboards because they provide positive feedback and don’t require full key travel to close a switch, so one quickly learns to start reaching for the next key while still releasing the current one.

Chariotoflove > Aremmes 03/29/2018 at 14:48

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Because FUTURE. Don’t you watch science fiction?

RacingShark > Nibby 03/29/2018 at 14:49

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I remember throwing out an old IBM keyboard from a IBM AT? the keyboard had the old school connector (round, maybe half an inch in diameter), so it wasn’t usable on anything modern (at the time, and even more so now).

That thing was SO heavy. The entire case was steel. Those were the days, when things were WAY overbuilt, because it was the easiest way. The keyboard would be about 35 years old now.
I’d probably murder anyone using it within 50 ft of me now. It was SO loud. Even my Cherry MX brown keyboard is silence compared to that old thing.

Chariotoflove > benjrblant 03/29/2018 at 14:50

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Writing will be obsolete in a few years anyway. Our kids are already down to using only thumbs. Everything will be voice activated.

Aremmes > Chariotoflove 03/29/2018 at 14:57

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Where we’re going we won’t need keyboards.

Yowen - not necessarily not spaghetti and meatballs > TheTurbochargedSquirrel 03/29/2018 at 15:08

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Ah thanks for the lesson! It seems there’s value there if you are a (very) serious gamer.

Roundbadge > lone_liberal 03/29/2018 at 16:13

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My company used Data General DG1600 terminals at its locations until the late 2000s. The original DG PS2 keyboards lasted the longest, but after that the next best were the replacement Keytronics I ordered. I loved Keytronics dearly.

I moved on to other projects, and the DG terminals were eventually replaced. The nimrods who took over for me started ordering $10 Logitechs and other crap keyboards because they basically just needed USB, and people would call me and complain about the trash equipment they were receiving.

Chariotoflove > Aremmes 03/29/2018 at 16:16

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Oh!, I have a friend who has been working on an electrical interface array using his DARPA funding. It’s not quite like this, but cool stuff. The idea is to allow people like Stephen Hawking to move around with thought.

lone_liberal > Roundbadge 03/29/2018 at 16:23

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We built some terrible keyboards too, the ones with built in trackballs were terrible , but for the most part even the consumer ones with rubber domes instead of microswitches were ok. The ones that we built for power generating stations and AT&T, though, were the best. Their downfall was the commodification of PCs. Where they used to get $50 for a keyboard from a PC OEM they were only getting $5 (and then less than that). That’s when the assembly line moved from here to Mexico, and then on to China.

R Saldana [|Oo|======|oO|] - BTC/ETH/LTC Prophet > Nibby 03/29/2018 at 16:53

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dat hardlock shutdown on unplug tho.....