Which boards did you spot in the wild?

User avatar
Thumper
knock knock

13 Jul 2016, 16:14

Today i met a fairly old customer while rolling out 802.1x who used a Model M. We spoke a bit about the "M" and he literally told me he's using this board since 20 years non stop at work because of the nice feeling.
In the next room the next surprice. Another old customer using a old Apple extended keyboard with alps for the same reason.
Both customers are researching material physics in space ;)

User avatar
Chyros

13 Jul 2016, 18:27

In space?! Well maybe the AEK and M behave very nicely in space, who knows Image .

rootwyrm

13 Jul 2016, 21:55

A data center I am regularly in has many SSKs. Not just "some" - I counted at least 9. 3 of them definitively full functional. 6 of them are in a box that allegedly contains more.
I regularly see genuine M's and a few Stealth Black M's (not M13's) since I'm a Unix guy with a lot of AIX.
There's a couple Solaris zealots I know that absolutely refuse to get off their Type 5's. Even though it's a rubber dumb.
You think SGI Granites are rare... I used to type daily on an SGI IRIS4D 'wedge.' The predecessor to the Granite - and it was Alps. I miss that board. It was unique.
I literally cannot go anywhere local without hitting a few 3270/5250 122-keys.
Seen these still running production. In 2007.
Used to work on the much, much, much bigger sibling to that which used a similar keyboard. Custom NEC mechanical switches of some flavor.

User avatar
Touch_It

14 Jul 2016, 06:07

Boring, but my local Sears had a terminal m keyboard in use about 3 years ago. Not sure if it's still there now though


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

davkol

14 Jul 2016, 10:31

derp
Last edited by davkol on 18 Jan 2025, 23:14, edited 1 time in total.

andrewjoy

14 Jul 2016, 10:44

I have seen an SSK connected to a till in a closed down store , its gone now tho :(.

Loads of shops have modern nixdorf matrix.

Also seen quite a few access is in stores too.

Seen a Winkeyless full sized model M in the library.

User avatar
shreebles
Finally 60%

14 Jul 2016, 10:52

At my current work location, the "best" keyboards are Cherry G83s... Not great but one of the better keyboards around here, these are OK when new. I've seen a lot of old SUN keyboards here also, all rubberdomes.
But the best keyboard in this house is obviously the one I bring in each day...

At company HQ, I made two of my co-workers see the light... One of them got a black G80 1800 from me while I convinced the other to get a Ozone Strike Battle with Browns for 50€. They are both quite happy with their keyboards, but that's the only room in the office I managed to convert.

At the post office, workers hammer away on G81 1800 keyboards with a card reader. Sure G80 would be nicer but they don't care anyway, they smash numpad enter at least 30 times for each customer :lol:

My dad's office also has only crappy rubber domes and he tried to give me his old ones ("you collect keyboards... right?")... Best find of the lot is a NIB G83, looks great, but regular rubber dome. And of course his Gabriele Typewriter which I killed for the caps.

It's funny and weird how much attention people like us pay to keyboards now. I cannot visit a store, an office or another person's home without checking out which keyboards they use (and quietly judging them for it) :P

User avatar
czarek

19 Jul 2016, 13:41

When visiting offices here in Poland you mostly see either Dell/HP rubber domes if they upgraded recently, or Cherry G80/G81 if they run older equipment.
Back in a day when I visited my mom's office in hospital I remember they ran IBM PS/2 and Valuepoint computers with Model Ms.

User avatar
emdude
Model M Apologist

19 Jul 2016, 19:58

At my uni, there's an IBM PCjr computer and keyboard, as well as an Apple IIe, on display. Not really the best examples of computing history, but.. :roll:

As for something more modern: About a month ago I accompanied a friend to my uni's library at 2 in the morning. The library had a 24-hour quiet room where we settled so my friend could study. Not long afterwards, there was a person that came in lugging around an actual full-sized gaming keyboard using some tactile/linear MX switch that he set down to use with his laptop.

Just the noise from the guy bottoming out the board as he was typing ticked off everyone in the room; the guy seemed completely oblivious to the glares he got. I don't think my friend managed to get much studying done either. :P

Post Reply

Return to “Keyboards”