deskthority

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Model Ms are perfectly capable of going wrong without any key presses at all. NIB boards nearly always shake like a rattle, for the sound of broken rivets. That’s the real enemy with Model M: one IBM did not factor into their marketing equation.

Model F does better, but crumbling foam is the insidious killer there. Neither design is meant for anything like the operational life of Micro Switch’s hall effect keyboards or even, frankly, Cherry MX as Kbdfr likes to remind us.

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dellmodelm wrote: ↑

01 Feb 2023, 10:22

most of the used/bolt-modded Model Ms on the market would have hit that a long time ago, assuming regular use.

My guess is that approximately 0% of ancient IBM iron has been in "regular use" since it was originally purchased.

Almost all of them have probably a small number of 1-5 year periods of use with long stints on the shelf in between.

At my current rate of usage and if I stick to the very same keyboard I am using now I should start worrying about the 25M mark at about a hundred years from now. And when that happens I imagine that I will have to... replace or restore the membrane and it should be good for a hundred years more.

I find more probable that we would end up living in a dystopian future where ChatGPT dominates the world Terminator-style than I am concerned about my Model M wearing off.

BTW 25M keypresses is the rate for a single switch not the entire keyboard, say the spacebar. 25M spacebar keypresses in just 30 years is possible but insane.

My guess is I’ve written two million words on my HHKB since 2014. It happens.

Muirium wrote: ↑

01 Feb 2023, 23:00

My guess is I’ve written two million words on my HHKB since 2014. It happens.

That would be approximately 2 full pages per day - every single day.
Not very much, if you ask me

Well, it’s not my only keyboard.

For a while, in the 2000s, this was:

Switch testing is almost always capped only at how long the manufacturer is willing to test the switch itself. Given that Model Ms are sometimes still used in working environments, even today, it can be assumed that the switch reliability is much higher than IBM bothered to measure.

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Microswitch's hall effect switches have rated lifetimes somewhere in the tens of billions, however due to their contactless nature I've seen suggestions that the true lifetime could be exponentially higher than this simply due to how long it would have taken to actuate a switch that many times. Either way, switch lifetimes aren't really 100% on the mark for rated lifetimes either. It can depend significantly on switch type, use conditions, etc etc, as to how long they'll last in regular use.

I've always heard that measuring lifetime by key-press wasn't 100% accurate. Especially given all of the other things that can break before then. Sometimes it sounds like a marketing gimmick they can slap on the box like "50 million key-presses" or "1.5x faster actuation".

When it comes to a keyboard that lasts, I really want to know about serviceability too! If it's something that I can repair/mod that saves me from throwing out the damn thing, I might say that is as much if not more important to me than the key press longevity.

The advertised potential lifespan of a bolt-modded IBM Model M keyboard exceeding the claimed 25,000,000 keypresses per switch is likely due to the modifications made to the keyboard. Therefore,fnf even though each individual switch may have a limited number of key presses, the modifications help to ensure the keyboard remains functional for many more years.

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mod edit: spam link edited, user banned

I would also argue that typing on a Model M would undoubtedly put more pressure onto the plastic rivets holding the board together, causing them to break earlier. I have a hunch *that* is partially the reason for the cap, if IBM reached a breaking point in their tests at any point and didn't decide to just... cap it off. Because Model Fs are known to last much longer, and DON'T have this weakness. Instead, Model Fs have foam that will inevitably degrade. All that's to say that while I think 30 years might be pushing it, I wouldn't be surprised if the main breaking element of the switch were the rivets.

The advertised potential lifespan of a clueless chatbot exceeds even the heat death of the universe.

Lol, can't wait to have conversations with my Quake 3 bots till the end of the universe

Muirium wrote: ↑

02 Feb 2023, 19:42

Well, it’s not my only keyboard.

For a while, in the 2000s, this was:

Spoiler:

Always tempted to buy an old macbook just to use as a writing machine. It would be a pleasure to use as an electronic diary.
Maybe once people stop trying to flog them over over a hundred quid I’ll pick one up.

That’s pretty much my PowerBook’s remaining job: I’ve Tiger on it, in all its Aqua glory, and Classic so I can play around in real deep vintage Mac software.

Though to put it in perspective: that 2003 PowerBook is now as old as the Apple Lisa (1983) was when I bought it new. 20 years. A year older than the first Mac. (1984)

The little G4 runs hot, as they always did, so you only get so long of silence until the fan kicks in. I remember pining for quiet computers all the years I used that wee fella as my main machine, tempted by the fact he was so quiet whenever you first opened him up.

Past me would have adored my M1! Maybe even killed!

I really hate the current vibe for tiny fans: they're so noisy once they spin up. Some (e.g. gf's Intel Nug) are also in almost unmaintainable positions so as the dust gradually clogs them up they get louder and louder, and once they reach screaming pitch and can't do any more the CPU overheats and turns off. And talking of notebooks, we still have the R40 Thinkpad, or rather Thunkpad now given that it wasn't all that fast even back in the day; a few of its keys are almost worn through, the stencils having gone long ago and most of the key surface since then. I'm kinda surprised and slightly impressed that the switches have lasted so long; dunno what they are offhand, nasty little short-travel scissor things, but surprisingly resilient.

Well in this case—that chunky little G4 PowerBook's playfully tubby chassis—the tiny fan is 20 years old. The Mac which replaced it in 2013 put out a hell of a lot more heat still (Intel i7); which it diffused effusively with a larger but asymmetric fan. The result was more of a whoosh than a whine, and one so quiet you had to put your ear to the underside of the machine to make it out when it was idle, most of the time. But the times it wasn't, it was going like the clappers! Way too much TDP in that thing.

My third Mac laptop is this one I’m on now: an M1 MacBook Air I bought on launch day, 2020. It has my favourite cooling yet: no fan at all. Permanent perfect silence! And it's a wee speed demon, too, thanks to Moore's Law being very far from over, outside of Intel.

So, cutting back to cooling: progress after all! The era of loud little fans really was the late 90s through 2000s for me.