if you've been a viewer for long enough you may remember that one time that i
had a little moment reminiscing about my old model m keyboard so far out of all
the keyboards i've used in my life this is the best
most solid overall feeling one other than i did have an ibm model m and uh
nothing can compare and i'm not alone not only did someone else care enough to
re-upload that clip as its very own video but there is a healthy second-hand
market for these things and you can even buy near identical
brand new recreations today
but in the age of bluetooth RGB and
macros should you care
let's find out speaking of random a semicolon lsd
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description
now udarn kids today might think that the model m looks like a basic old
school keyboard but that is exactly why
it's special the layout that nearly every keyboard
uses today is standard because of this keyboard
from over 30 years ago now to be clear the qwerty layout has
been around since the 1800s but by the
time ibm was releasing personal computers in the 1980s keyboards needed
a lot more keys than just letters and
numbers and prior to the model m these keys
could be found in all sorts of stupid and seemingly arbitrary places the
reason that this board is different is that ibm put a lot of effort even
developing a 10 person task force into
developing a friendlier keyboard letting focus groups rearrange enlarge or even
duplicate commonly used keys
the result was this board that looks totally normal except it's missing
Windows keys and a couple of other things you see
this isn't actually a model m per se
this is the zeroth generation ibm
enhanced keyboard that launched in 1985
as part of the ibm 3161 terminal that's
why it doesn't have any lights for caps num or scroll lock those settings would
be displayed on the terminal screen instead you'll also notice that it has a 5 pin
din connector instead of a ps2 connector
like other model m's this is significant because the model m
launched with ibm's personal system 2 or
ps2 computer with the ibm ps2 that is
where the connector gets its name this
is a second generation model m the most popular it was manufactured back in 1987
just one year after i was born and we know this because every model m has a
little birth certificate on its back
but why do people still like these things so much after all these years
well it comes down to feel sound
and build quality model m's use switches that are very
different to the cherry mx's that keyboard enthusiasts today might be used
to in the patent these switches are
actually called catastrophically buckling compression column switch and
actuator but most normal people just call them
buckling spring switches and that's because under each keycap there really
is a little tiny spring
so in the starting position the spring puts pressure on a rocker
preventing it from closing the circuit but when you press the key down
the spring eventually buckles tilting the rocker to contact a layer of
membrane and registering your stroke at the precise instant that you feel the
tactile feedback wait hold up
did that say membrane yes
model m's are often erroneously called
mechanical keyboards but they are in fact membrane boards which is why they
only have two key rollover just remember that this does not mean
that they use rubber domes that is
different or well okay actually some model m's do
use rubber domes but more on that later
anyway the result is a very balanced
feel with a nice tactile bump and a 70
gram weighting for pure typists there's
very little on the market even all these decades later that feels this good
but while the buckling spring switches create auditory feedback that some
people find very satisfying at least the
ones doing the typing anyway they also take a long time to register
repeated strokes making them unsuitable for competitive gaming though you could
always just bludgeon your opponents over the head
when you lose because the model m's are heavy boards
the plastic shell and the key caps are made from hard pvc and pbt plastics that
aren't painted and don't yellow with age and inside there's a heat treated metal
back plate that's responsible for the m's negligible deck flex and it's five
pound heft at least they were five pounds
thing is not all model m's are created equal in
1990 ibm sold part of its keyboard
manufacturing division to what would become lexmark
lexmark continued to make these keyboards for ibm but
more cheaper this model m from 1995 demonstrates some
of the changes including one good one drainage holes to protect it from its
arch nemesis water along with several
less good ones like a lighter back plate and plastic shell a fixed instead of
removable cable a monochrome legend on the keycaps and
rubber dome switches to be clear they're good rubber domes
but still anyway the keyboard gods work in mysterious
ways and the growing popularity of rubber domes led to the collapse of the
mechanical keyboard business with lexmark dropping their keyboard division
outright in 1996 and here is where our story gets
interesting a group of former ibm and lexmark
employees began slowly purchasing the
model m's intellectual property rights except for the logo
and the physical manufacturing equipment that was used to make it
the company they formed is called unicomp and that's where this came from
it's a unicomp classic and it was manufactured on january 15
2018 because of this heritage unicomp model
m's aren't really clones but they're more like
descendants so how do they compare to the original
well if you didn't spend the 80s and 90s typing on model m's when they were new
it's kind of hard to judge the feel of a brand new unicom classic against an ibm
board whose spring switches are 30 years older
but even if you ask the people who have been using model m's for decades you
will still get some who claim that the unicomps feel identical and others
who claim that they feel very different and from a certain point of view they're
both right the unicomp boards are modeled after the
last model that lexmark made so while they have the exact same
switches as the early boards they are lighter weight and interestingly they
can have imperfections on the case and less sharp lettering due to the aging
mold and tooling equipment so
our final take the unicom boards are as close as you
can get to brand new anyway to the original model m
while also offering new color interface and key options all for less money than
most keyboards of a similar quality so as a well-priced typing board i can
see the appeal but my money would go to either a more
versatile cherry mx or an older
generation model m off ebay even though i know that i'd be paying a
pretty penny and i would probably need an adapter
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tech tips and enter Linus tech tips in the how did you hear about us section
don't i seem super credible sitting here in this like jacket like this what do
you think no all right well thanks for watching
guys and a massive shout out to LTT forum user ultimate mythbuster for
loaning us his three precious model m's for this video if this video sucked you
guys know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to where to
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merch store which has cool shirts like the one i'm oh i actually am still
wearing it hold on
like this one and our community forum which you should totally join how about
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