= Best Keyboards Ever: A Deep Dive (This is a script fpr two voices. Except in a few specific spots where it's necessary, I have not tried to determine which lines should be Wendell's vs. mine. I expect we'll both improv a bit.) (Keyboards lined up on a table: A beam-spring 3278, an original Model F, a vintage Model M 1391401, an M122 battleship, a pre-new-tooling Unicomp Ultra Classic, a Unicomp New Model M, a new-build Model F, and a Northgate OmniKey. Behind them is a Woodstock mechanical typewriter.) Hello, I'm Wendell Wilson. Hello, I'm Eric Raymond. ZOOM IN ON KEYBOARDS And these...are the best computer keyboards ever made by the hand of man. We're going to tell you their story. The triumph. The tragedy. The comedy of errors. And why you should care, and how you can get one of them for yourself. ZOOM OUT Let's start with why you should care. Three words... In unison: Repetitive Strain Injury Those of you who have had it are already wincing. If you've never had it, you don't want it. But if you spend a lot of your waking hours typing on a keyboard, it can sneak up on you. Gradually increasing pain in your hands and wrists, interfering with your concentration, in extreme cases making it agony to type at all. Thre are many ways you can get RSI. We're only going to address one of the common ones: badly-designed computer keyboards. Most people have known since the 1990s that too much typing can hurt you. ZOOM IN ON WOODSTOCK TYPEWRITER And yet, before that decade human beings had been pounding away on keyboards for a hundred years without RSI becoming a thing. So, why is it a problem today? ZOOM OUT It's a problem today because most modern computer keyboards are crap. They're missing a feature that, once upon a time, almost all computer keyboards accidentally had: tactile feedback. And the best way we can explain tactile feedback is to take a close look at the keyboard switch at the heart of all but one of the terminals on that table: the buckling spring. ZOOM IN ON 1391401 This is an IBM Model M keyboard. This one was made in {FILL IN YEAR}. Inside it are over a hundred buckling-spring keyboard switches. DISPLAY BUCKLING-SPRING ANIMATION A keyboard switch is a device that responds to a finger press by making an electrical connection between a pair of contacts, and to the finger being lifted away by breaking that connection. What it tells the finger turns out to be as important as what it tells the circuit. A buckling spring's first response to being pressed is to gently give under pressure. The spring bends smoothly - until it buckles, striking the side of the switch well and pushing a flapper downward to make contact with a capacitive sensor below. That buckling action produces a tiny bump that a typist's finger can feel. This is tactile feedback that the switch has engaged. Most typists unconsciously learn to interpret this, and to back off pressure on the key immediately after engagement to reduce the effort of typing. END BUCKLING-SPRING ANIMATION The buckling spring was not the first key switch to be used in computer keyboards, not by any means. But it arrived at a special time - a time when, due to the earliest personal computers, more people were typing faster and for longer stretches than they ever had before. That was putting new levels of stress on lots of typing hands. And yet, for a solid decade after 1981, typing-induced RSI was still rare. We didn't know it yet, but tactile feedback was reducing the amount of stress on most peoples' hands just enough to save them from injury. We were blissfully ignorant of the doom about to descend upon us. The doom called "rubber-dome switches". The horror. The horror. In the 1990s, PC manufacturers under competitive pressure were frantically seeking ways to cut the parts cost of their products. One of the ways they found was a new style of keyboard switch. DISPLAY RUBBER-DOME DIAGRAM In a rubber-dome switch, there are electrical contacts at the top and bottom of a hollow hemispherical dome. Finger pressure crushes the dome, pushing them together. This took less initial pressure than a buckling-spring key to get moving, and rubber-dome-switch keyboards were marketed as an ergonomic improvement. "Soft touch", they said. But the soft touch had hidden costs. You could start the switch on its travel with less effort, but to actually engage the switch you have to mash it - bottom it out. There's no tactile feedback to tell you that you can back off the pressure *before* your finger hits a hard stop. The force from that hard stop reflects back into your hands, shocking the tissues and joints. Each individual shock is microscopic, but a skilled typist can easily take more than fifty thousand of them a day. As cheap rubber-dome switches drove buckling springs out of the mass market, the incidence of RSI shot up. END RUBBER-DOME DIAGRAM We now interrupt our presentation for a moment of pedantry. It wasn't, actually, quite that simple. There were other kinds of key switches on the market that gave tactile feedback; we'll glance at one later in this video. There were even some unusual kinds of tactile rubber-dome switches. But IBM was selling more keyboards than anyone else, at least until Compaq passed them in sales volume 1n 1994, so the buckling spring was the most widely used. And the cheap no-feedback rubber-dome switches flooding the market were a slow-motion ergonomic disaster. Eric: I remember those years. My hands were starting to hurt, and I had no idea why. I wasn't alone; RSI hit programmers early and hard and it took us a long time to understand what was doing it. Gradually we started to notice that those of us who had held on to our "obsolete" buckling-spring keyboards weren't hurting. Wendell: One of those holdouts was me. I'd been using buckling-spring keyboards since before I was a teenager; I loved them and wasn't about to give them up. Eric: Then, some of us with RSI symptoms noticed that if we threw out our "soft-touch" keyboards for that heavy old clunker in the closet...our RSI got better. One of those people was me. DISPLAY GEEKHACK.ORG AND DESKTHORITY.COM LINKS IBM shipped its last buckling-spring keyboard sometime in 1999. It wasn't until after 2000 that today's keyboard-enthusiast culture began to form at places like geekhack.org and deskthority.com, and when it did buckling-spring keyboards weren't the center of attention. While a handful of programmers were rediscovering the buckling spring, a much larger subculture of on-line gamers were getting the idea that the bad ergonomics of rubber-dome keyboards were slowing down their responses to twitch games. Most of them rejected the Model M because it didn't support N-key rollover - an issue we'll return to later in this video. Instead, they began scavenging or hacking together their own keyboards. They came to use the term "mechanical" to describe what they were looking for. Eventually a swarm of small companies formed to service the gamer market, usually packaging Cherry switches in boards with LED backlights and very stylish cases. Eric: I suspect that one subtle reason the gamers mostly passed on buckling springs is that RSI comes at them from a different angle. They only type fast in short bursts, not the long stretches of continuous typing programmers and writers have to do. When they get RSI it tends to be from their pointing devices, not their keyboards - so they don't benefit from tactile-feedback keyswitches as much. In fact, some knowledgeable gamers will tell you they don't *want* tactile feedback - they'd rather have very light, fast-response switches with no bump. If you're one of those people, we think you should consider keeping separate gaming and typing keyboards, and choosing your typing keyboard for tactile feedback. In the long run, doing that might save your hands. Now it's time for us to admit that even for serious typists, the buckling-spring is not *always* a better choice. A minority of people, including some programmers like us, never learn to use tactile feedback at all. For them, buckling-spring keyboards are just stiff and uncomfortable. TRON GUY POPS INTO EXISTENCE Unison: Why hi, Tron Guy! Tron Guy: "One of those people is *me*!" WENDELL AND ERIC SHRUG ELABORATELY. TRON GUY VANISHES. Some typists can't use buckling-spring keyboards because they're too noisy for open-office workplaces. The clickyness has a cost. In the rest of this video, we're going to assume that you're not one of those exceptions, and explain how to find a buckling-spring keyboard to suit your needs, fit your budget, and save you from RSI. And, not incidentally, last approximately forever. In 2021 it is not especially unusual for Model M fans to be driving keyboards that are more than 30 years old and still going strong. These units tend to be built like tanks, and if you have children they may well pass your Model M to your grandchildren. The extreme longevity of Model Ms has consequences for how to choose one. So now we're going to step into the wayback machine again and look at how the buckling-spring keyboard has changed over the last 40 years. But first, the incredibly obscure beam spring! ZOOM IN ON 3278 This is not a buckling-spring keyboard. It's called a "beam-spring" keyboard. Most of them shipped with IBM mainframes in the mists of the 1970s. The few people who have had hands on one tend to rave about how wonderful its tactile feedback and sound are. These units are very rare today in 2021. If you can find one for sale at all it will probably cost you upwards of $2000. A handful of enthusiasts have paid that much to restore them and hook them up to modern computers, coping with the archaic layout because they're just that good. Sadly, the beam-spring keyboard was eye-wateringly expensive to make, which is why they haven't been manufactured since the early 1980s. Richard Harris, the IBM engineer who invented the beam spring, devised buckling springs when he was told to come up with something cheaper. Today in mid-2021 there are a couple of efforts to revive the beam-spring switch underway. None of them have shipped a keyboard yet. Keyboard enthusiasts await the day, because just possibly it might be *better* than the buckling spring. ZOOM ON ORIGINAL MODEL F The oldest buckling-spring keyboard, the venerable Model F, issued in 1981 along with the original IBM PC. You probably do not want one of these. Many serious buckling-spring fans, including us, think the F switch feels better than the later Model M switch. But working originals are expensive, don't have the ANSI layout of a modern keyboard, and require special trickery to interface to modern PCs. That modern keyboard layout? The Model M actually defined it. Between 1983 and 1984, an engineering task force at IBM did a redesign of the Model F. One of their objectives was to lower its manufacturing costs. They simplified the switch, changing its feel and sound slightly. The also did a lot of ergonomic studies, and designed a new keyboard layout. IMAGE OF VT220 This is a DEC VT220, a serial terminal for timesharIng systems that was very popular in early 1980s. It should look familiar. Notice the arrow-key cluster in the shape of an inverted T? The three blocks of alphanumeric keys, nav cluster, and number pad? The function keys along the top? The IBM engineering team knew a good thing when they saw it and copied the main features of the VT220 layout. IMAGE FADE IBM shipped the first Model M in 1985. The very oldest Model Ms, made in 1985 and 1986, are the most rare and valuable ones, still fetching rather high prices today. That's because over the years, the Model M design was gradually lightened to reduce the materials cost of manufacture. All Model Ms are pretty rugged, but as you go back in time they get heavier and more tank-like. Serious fans prefer the oldest vintage Model Ms they can find. ZOOM ON 1391401 This is the Model M 1391401. First shipped in 1987, it's the second generation Model M and what many people now consider the most classic version. Today in mid-2021 you'll find the 1391401 and other variants on eBay at widely varying prices - and not necessarily in the greatest of condition. TEXT CAPTION: https://www.clickykeyboards.com/ You can get a known-good vintage model M at www.clickykeyboards.com, cleaned and restored, for around $250. Depending on the date it will have either an IBM AT or a PS/2 connector; various adapters and custom modifications exist to interface it to USB. CAPTION: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/model-m-troubleshooting.html Wendell: For more about those adapters, go read Eric's "Model M Troubleshooting FAQ". FADE CAPTION The main advantage of buying one of these vintage Ms is the "built like a tank" part. There's a running joke among keyboard enthusiasts that a vintage Model M is exactly the keyboard to be using in the event of a zombie apocalypes, because you can bludgeon the zombies to death with it and then resume typing as if nothing had interrupted your day. In 1991 IBM spun out its Model M manufacturing to form Lexmark, Inc. which accelerated the trend of design changes to lower manufacturing costs. These involved lightening and thinning the keyboard enclosure and reducing the mass of the metal backplate in the unit. Thus, while the Lexmark-era Model Ms are pretty sturdy and massive compared to almost any keyboard that isn't a Model M, they don't have quite the heavy-armored toughness of the IBM originals, and can often be picked up for a bit less. A few particularly cheaped-out Lexmark Model Ms were even made with rubber-dome switches, which is BLASPHEMY. (If possible, we want a demonic-sounding base-boost and distortion effect applied to the word "blasphemy" in post. A licking-flames visual effect might not be amiss.) One particularly interesting variant of the Model M is the one fans call "the battleship". ZOOM IN ON M122 What if 104 keys is insufficient, and an ordinary model M is not quite tank-like enough? Do you dream of a pipe-organ-sized console on which to execute mad fugues? Then the M122 may be the keyboard for you. These monsters were originally built as consoles for IBM mainframes, and for applications like airline reservation and banking systems. The legends on the left-hand bank of function keys are rather variable depending on the deployment the M122 was built for. The rumors that they require a structurally reinforced desk are almost entirely untrue. ZOOM OUT When you're shopping for a vintage Model M, you'll want to be careful about "terminal" variants. These were made to use with older IBM computers that don't speak the PS/2 protocol. Usually they have a blank panel in the upper right corner where you would expect lock lights on a PC keyboard. These require special adapters that are less common than an ordinary PS/2-to-USB, and availability can be hit or miss. It's best to be sure you can get your hands on an adapter that matches your keyboard before you buy the hardware. If you buy an M on an auction site and the price seems suspiciously low, check the part number on its sticker against the identification table in the Wikipedia Model M entry. Most likely it's damaged or unusable; but if it's described as "working", it might be rubber-dome. Or a terminal variant. Know before you buy. ZOOM ON ULTRA CLASSIC In 1996 Lexmark exited the keyboard business. Rubber domes had pretty much eaten the world at that point and buckling-spring keyboards were fast becoming a niche product. A group of employees at the Lexmark plant in Lexington, Kentucky bought the Lexmark molds and tooling. They formed a company called Unicomp and coninued to sell Model Ms in many variations to customers requiring exceptional durability and reliability in a time-tested design. CAPTION: https://www.pckeyboard.com/ Unicomp started from the Lexmark designs, adding desired new features like Windows keys and USB support. Unfortunately they also continued the trend of cutting weight and using cheaper plastic for the cases. Worse, over the next 14 years the tooling they had inherited from Lexmark wore out. The buckling springs were as good as ever, but the fit and finish of keycaps and cases deteriorated. FADE CAPTION Indifferent build quality at Unicomp kept the market for vintage Model Ms humming. For many years it was close to a tossup whether Unicomp or a used vintage Model M was your best option. ZOOM IN ON NEW MODEL M In 2020 Unicomp finally refreshed its tooling. The result was this. This is a New Model M. It's not as rugged as the old IBM Model Ms, but it's comparable to the Lexmark units. Compared to previous Unicomps the case is more rigid, the keycaps more uniform, and various blemishes due to worn injection molds are gone. Today this keyboard is $104 at Unicomp's website. It speaks USB. If you're new to buckling-spring keyboards, this is probably what you want. Unicomp is very proud of this product. So much so that they even deprecate some of their own older models on their website. END ZOOM But there is...another. Another? For some people, even a vintage Model M is not studly enough. For those people - the few, the proud, the insane - there's the New Model F. ZOOM IN ON NEW MODEL F Wendell: I have a New Model F, and this is it. I've reviewed it in a separate video, link on the screen. CAPTION: The New F77 Model F Keyboard: Successor To The Model M? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFwkiKz2XHM Eric: I have one on order. The New Model F is being made in a single production run which may be over by the time you see this video. Units cost $355 and up, but like the original Model F this is a keyboard for the ages - even tougher and more tactile than the model M. And for you gamers out there, it has full N-Key rollover. FADE CAPTION Yeah, let's talk about rollover. Rollover and ghosting, two different concepts that are often confused. A keyboard has N-key rollover if you can press N keys down without letting up on any of them and they will all register in the correct order before any of them is released. When a keyboard has limited rollover, the worst that can happen is some keystrokes in a multi-key press fail to register. Ghosting is a nastier failure mode: if a keyboard is susceptible to it, a multiple-key press will generate spurious "ghost keystrokes" that weren't in the sequence you pressed. If this sounds like a different definition of "ghosting" than you've heard before, that's because sloppy usage of the term "anti-ghosting" in keyboard marketing literature has misled a lot of people about what "ghosting" is. When vendors talk about "anti-ghosting", what they actually mean is that they support more than 2-key rollover, but only for certain groups of keys like the WASD cluster and shift or control modifiers that they expect to be used in combinations. Model F keyboards, both old and new, have unlimited rollover and never ghost. For model Ms, it's more complicated. They never ghost, but their rollover is limited. Most variants only support 2-key rollover, which is as little as you can get away with to make a Shift or Control key work. The new Unicomp Mini-M is an exception. It reworks the traces on its sensor membrane to eliminate possible collisions with frequently-used keys, including the WASD cluster and modifier keys. Then it repeats a trick used in many gaming-oriented keyboards to support more than the usual USB limit of 6-key rollover. That is to stuff two USB controllers into the board handling different sets of leads from the keyboards According to Unicomp, the Mini-M can correctly report combinations as long as 10 simultaneous keys. But not all such combinations; some will still drop keys. It would take a much more fundamental redesign of the sensor membrane to entirely solve that problem. And while we're clearing up confusion, let's talk about "tactile" versus "clicky". Buckling-spring keyboards are both tactile and clicky - you get both feedback through touch and an audible click when they engage. The opposite of "tactile" is "linear"; the opposite of "clicky" is "silent". CAPTION: https://www.youtube.com/user/Chyrosran22 Eric: Some people, including at least one well-known and very expert keyboard reviewer, Thomas Ran of the Chyrosran22 YouTube channel, use these words differently. In his terminology, a "clicky" switch gives both tactile and audible feedback when it engages, while a "tactile" switch gives only tactile and no audible feedback. I was quite astonished when his video on the Top Ten Tactile Switches didn't include the buckling spring; instead it was in his video on Top Ten *Clicky* Switches. FADE CAPTION Eric: This is an older and less precise way of talking about keyswitches which I think was more common before about 2015. You may still run into it, especially among people who are not native speakers of English. Finally, we need to talk about the phrase "mechanical keyboard". Back at the beginning of the revolt against crappy rubber-dome switches, when today's keyboard-enthusiast subculture was first forming, people started using "mechanical" to describe anything that *wasn't* a rubber-dome keyboard. Several attempts to give the term a more precise definition have failed. All the proposals have really embarrassing edge cases. In fact, there are people who will look at you with a straight face and tell you that buckling-springs aren't "mechanical", because they have a membrane at the bottom rather than a PCB! We think it's best to simply drop the term "mechanical keyboard" and talk about what you want in yours. Do you want tactile? Do you want clicky? Do you like long travel or short travel? What degree of stiffness makes you comfortable? Do you value having a keyboard last forever, or are you OK with changing it up every few years? Buckling-spring keyboards are: tactile, clicky, long-travel, moderately stiff, and last forever. The first four of those traits are the ones that can save you from RSI. And now, a little something extra. We're going to try to demonstrate that we're not monomaniacs. Wait. We're *not* monomaniacs? Never! Well..hardly ever. There are very few keyboards that can stand comparison with the Model M's typing feel and durability. But we do know of one. ZOOM IN ON NORTHGATE OMNIKEY This is a Northgate OmniKey. It was an early copy of the Model M design, first shipped in 1987. They're not made with buckling springs, but with a kind of switch called an ALPS SKCM that is no longer manufactured. Despite this, even hard-core Model M fans like us judge the OmniKey is nearly as good as an M - so close that we don't dis people who think it's better. The key feel is superb, both tactile and clicky. Like the Model M it is extremely rugged and durable. And like the Model M, they OmniKey has long outlasted the computers it originally shipped with. Northgate was an undistinguished maker of PC clones, but the OmniKey was so widely loved that when the company closed up shop in 2005 the OmniKey product line was bought up and manufactured under the name "Avant" until 2011. In 2021 OmniKeys are harder to find than vintage Model Ms and often fetch even higher prices. In part, because far fewer of them were manufactured to begin with. Today is an exciting time to be a keyboard geek. After many years in the wilderness, Unicomp is finally producing keyboards with a build quality approaching that of the vintage gear. The New Model F is shipping. Efforts to revive the beam spring are underway. The question has to be faced: is there still any real point to seeking out a vintage Model M or an OmniKey? We think there is, though we can easily imagine a future in which the market for vintage Ms collapses. Unicomp's product would not have to get a lot better than it is now before nobody but a handful of obsessive collectors would still care about the vintage gear. Bringing the case and backplate back up to the weight, rigidity, and texture of the IBM originals would almost certainly do it. There's even some hope that gamer keyboards might get good enough. And by that we mean "Good enough for people who actually type on them", rather than just using them as input controllers for games. Despite all the money poured into developing gamer keyboards over the last decade, many gamers have never actually used a keyboard with better than barely adequate typing ergonomics. The problems with gamer keyboards have traditionally started with switches that provide little or no tactile feedback. The dominance of the cheap and mediocre Cherry keyswitch hasn't helped. Yes, they *are* better than generic rubber domes, but that's not a high bar to clear. The problems have traditionally continued with build quality that is compromised by relentless cheaping out. Instead of durability and reliability, gamer keyboards tend to be sold with aggressive styling and gimmicks like RGB backlighting. However, as competition drives vendors to try to differentiate themselves, a few are actually moving in the direction of higher quality. We think Daskeyboard, Mattias and Massdrop are three vendors that deserve honorable mentions. They're not up to the ergonomic standard of a Model M yet, but they at least ship some types that aren't flashy junk and are experimenting with better keyswitch designs. Someday soon, the beam-spring revival or some unforseeable new invention might enable vendors like these to give the buckling spring stronger competition than it's had since the last OmniKey shipped. Then things will get really interesting. But that has not happened yet. Today, in 2021, a Model M or Model F is still the typing hand's best friend. And with that, we segue to the inevitable typing demonstration! TYPING DEMO: Wendell's hands typing on all our specimens. ERIC AND WENDELL DISCUSS SOUND AND FEEL (This will have to be extemporized, as we can't know what comparisons will tell us in advance.) (Things to say in this section...) BRIEF CLIP OF WENDELL'S HANDS TYPING ON THE 3278 True fact: IBM didn't think beam springs were load enough, so they shipped the 3278 with a noisemaker - a little solenoid that thumps when you press a key. They thought it would comfort people used to Selectric typewriters. OUTRO BEGINS: We'd like to wrap up by inviting you to consider how strange and wonderful it is for computing-hardware technology to have the staying quality of buckling-spring keyboards. How many other examples are there of literally four-decade-old computer equipment that people want to buy, not out of nostalgia but for daily use. The buckling spring... ...it's a marvellous thing. Thanks for watching. Thanks for watching.