Some questions about the IBM 3101 keyboard

User avatar
PlacaFromHell

04 Dec 2018, 18:40

Hi guys. About a year ago I started to have a lot of intrigue about my keyboard.
First, why was IBM still producing IBM 3101 computers in the 1986? Not only had the XT come out, it was one year after being discontinued.
Is the keyboard compatible with the IBM Series/1? I heard about it but I'm not sure.
Why would I have wanted to use a 3101 at that time?
How often was it used by the United States government?
I have the necessary reasons to think that this was used by the armed forces of my country, but I need to know a bit more of it before form a conclusion.

__red__

04 Dec 2018, 18:52

Two reasons spring to mind:
1. These are terminal keyboards, so completely separate market to the XT. We still make terminal keyboards today.
2. In the time period you're referring to it was still "nobody got fired for buying IBM". They were back then and still are in their core businesses (in)famous for having reliable (overpriced) supply of everything they make.

In their core businesses, they don't really discontinue anything fully for ridiculous amounts of time...

User avatar
PlacaFromHell

05 Dec 2018, 00:01

I was thinking the same as you in the reason Nº1 but remember this thing:

Image

PS: mine is a beamspring

John Doe

05 Dec 2018, 01:50

PlacaFromHell wrote: I was thinking the same as you in the reason Nº1 but remember this thing:

Image

PS: mine is a beamspring
The 3178 variant without "blue switch" is rare also, never seen this before.

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