The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

“I got five pieces of candy!” “I got a chocolate bar!” “I got a quarter!” “I got a keyboard.”

It is well known I like my IBM Model M keyboards, both at home and at the office (thankfully, my fellow cow-orkers don't seem to mind as they can be a bit clicky). So it was a nice surprise when fellow cow-orker J presented me with an IBM Model M SSK in the original package!

[Even though it's smaller than normal, at 4lbs (2kg) it's still quite lethal.]

It's missing the numeric keypad, but that's something I rarely if ever even use on the normal IBM Model Ms I use so that doesn't bother me. What has me intrigued are the legends on the keycaps:

[This is making up for that IBM Model M with APL keycaps I missed getting by 10 seconds years ago.]

Some of these keys have five different functions, so I'm left wondering how one would select which function. For instance, the key with the front faced labeled END-ITEM—you have just the plain key, Shift-key, Ctrl-key, Ctrl-Shift-key, and … not Alt-key because the label isn't green, unlike the front label on the “P” key … perhaps Left-Ctrl-key and Right-Ctrl-key? I don't know. But it looks cool!

The keyboard seems smaller than it really is—the keys are the same size as on a regular keyboard, and the removable keycaps fit perfectly on my normal IBM Model M. The feel of using it is subtly different though. I wonder if that's because this keyboard probably has never seen use and thus, isn't broken in.

I wasn't able to find much of anything about this keyboard on the Intarwebs, just this one page where someone by the name of Mr. Nobody was selling the same keyboard (made on the same day no less!) for, and I quote, “a pocket deep as an ocean.”

In any case, it's sitting by, just in case the keyboard I've been using for nearly 20 years ever dies on me.

Update on Monday, November 5th, 2018

I have some new information on this keyboard.

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