Sharktastica

https://sharktastica.co.uk/image?id=yysMQjg1 Admiring the keyboard layout they went with. I love that Ctrl is placed in my preferred location. That’s prime real estate that modern keyboards waste on Capslock. Unfortunately, Capslock still exists awkwardly adjacent to the space bar.

If you buy at Unicomp, I'd recommend the New models. There are two. A full size and a compact. They have better finish than all their other models. Check the review of the full size New Model M here: https://sharktastica.co.uk/articles/newm_review.php You can find the new Mini M here: https://www.pckeyboard.com/page/product/MINI_M

They didn't design it to be loud, they designed it to be reliable, less expensive to manufacture and to have excellent typing feel. The basic design was patented in 1971 and later variant in 1977. It's important for touch typing to have a good hysteresis between make and break and to have a uniform and progressive pressure building up to break-point. Some sound is also helpful. Far from being loud, it would have been quieter than a room full of typewriters, let alone line printers. https://sharktastica.co.uk/wiki?id=ibmbucklingspring https://patents.google.com/patent/US3699296A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US4118611A/en All that being said, I use a keyboard with cherry green switches and they're OK. It's not got quite as nice of a hysteresis curve, but you can see from the diagrams in the links above why that buckling spring is just a really clever way to make a very nice feel.

So something like this[1] could be cool then. A actual thinkpad keyboard with touchpad, bluetooth, trackpoint and even a fingerprint reader. [1] https://sharktastica.co.uk/keyboard-directory/GD2va1CX

It's the | symbol. On later generations of IBM terminal keyboard, you'll see | on the shift-1 position, and a separate key with the broken-bar (¦) symbol. For example, on this keyboard, the broken bar is below the backspace key along with the \ character. https://sharktastica.co.uk/image?id=qhTU8QvD The reason for the two different types of bar/pipe characters, and why the original IBM PC keyboards only had the broken bar on the keyboard, involves a particularly arcane footnote of history relating to supporting the PL/I language on ASCII terminals: https://www.os2museum.com/wp/a-wunderbar-story/

Omission from the timeline: SK-8855 Though they have a page for it: https://sharktastica.co.uk/wiki?id=lenovo8855

>> IBM announces the 3161 and 3163 ASCII Display Stations, serial-based terminals in the IBM 3101 lineage that were capable of emulating various third-party terminals. They sported the first terminal-specific IBM Enhanced Keyboards, which typically have an extra key over ANSI and ISO PC-style Enhanced Keyboards, and ASCII-style ones like 316X's often uniquely have line drawing symbols on their numeric keypads. And of course you'll be playing rogue. https://sharktastica.co.uk/resources/images/terminals/Wyatt8740_3161.j… (Nethack came out two years later)

I had this problem and solved it by using trackpoint keyboards [0], sadly they're pretty pricey on eBay now though. There are newer models that are slightly worse keyboards, but are wireless. I also haven't had trouble using a trackpad, centered relative to whatever monitor/screen I'm using. Good luck! [0]: https://sharktastica.co.uk/wiki?id=lenovo8855

Those Thinkpad keyboards look really sweet. They were even made under the IBM brand, but those seem to be ultra rare. https://sharktastica.co.uk/wiki?id=ibm88xxultranav

SK-8855 (https://sharktastica.co.uk/wiki?id=lenovo8855) is my biggest productivity tool. I'm probably about twice as productive with this keyboard than without it. They resell for $150+ on ebay. I dread the day when my supply runs out.

Here's a real IBM 3270 keyboard.[1] Note the "Next field" key on the left, and the matching "Previous field" key on the right. The IBM 3270 was a device for filling up forms. The mainframe sent the terminal a form with blanks, and the terminal let the user fill in the blanks. The terminal hardware prevented the user from overwriting the static parts of the form, and could apply some other form constraints, such as numeric fields. That was all done by the terminal. When the form was filled in, the user pressed ENTER, and the completed form was sent to the mainframe as one transaction. This approach let one mainframe service huge numbers of terminals. The user never experienced delays while typing and could type at full speed, often without looking. PCs didn't have that usage model. The PC crowd was thinking "typewriter". One of the first terminals for home computers was called the "TV Typewriter". Web forms do have that model, but with less consistency. [1] https://sharktastica.co.uk/resources/images/model_bs/themk_1825028_ibm…