Brand New Model F NorCal Meetup!

[Taeha Types]

Ellipse, the guy behind the Brand New Model F project (https://modelfkeyboards.com) luckily happened to be in town this past weekend and was kind enough to hold a meetup for us customers/enthusiasts to play around with his latest samples. It was truly a great experience not only playing around with the boards that honestly exceeded my expectations, but also just getting to talk with Ellipse and seeing how much he cared about the project and his customers. The color matching of the keycaps was immaculate, the case felt amazing, and Ellipse definitely did not fail in his reverse engineering of the original boards and reviving them. He told us that the springs are just about finalized as well and that he hopes to start shipping before the end of the year!

[Chyros]

That Battleship seems a bit out of place in that video :p .

[darkcruix]

That Battleship seems a bit out of place in that video :p .

C'mon - family reunion with some DNA cloning going on here

[Chyros]

That Battleship seems a bit out of place in that video :p .

C'mon - family reunion with some DNA cloning going on here

Well yeah, but Ellipse doesn't repro F122s xD .

[constexpr]

Great vid Mr. Sleeves.

Well yeah, but Ellipse doesn't repro F122s xD .

I know you wish he would!

[Chyros]

Great vid Mr. Sleeves.

Well yeah, but Ellipse doesn't repro F122s xD .

I know you wish he would!

Yes! And F107s! xD

[darkcruix]

Yes! And F107s! xD

I knew you would say this
Yours is pretty nice. Sure, I would convert it to ANSI, but your restoration job was well done

[Taeha Types]

Wish he'd repro F122's and others as well hehe

[green-squid]

Awesome video. Is ellipse the boy in blue?

EDIT: crap, I meant the one with the black hair in the thumbnail. His shirt looked dark-blue!

[darkcruix]

Awesome video. Is ellipse the boy in blue?

EDIT: crap, I meant the one with the black hair in the thumbnail. His shirt looked dark-blue!

That is him

[green-squid]

Awesome video. Is ellipse the boy in blue?

EDIT: crap, I meant the one with the black hair in the thumbnail. His shirt looked dark-blue!

That is him

Nice. He's a handsome looking man (no homo). And the older person there looks to be the IBM veteran he was talking about.

Who were the other people that were there?

[depletedvespene]

Great vid Mr. Sleeves.

Well yeah, but Ellipse doesn't repro F122s xD .

I know you wish he would!

Let's be frank here — all of us here want more repro sizes, other than just the F62 and F77. In no particular order: TKL, unsaver, F107, full-size and battleship (and leftnav and monitor as well, but that's probably just me). Should we run a poll or what?

[green-squid]

I think we're going to give ellipse a new job with all of these requests!

[depletedvespene]

And SOLBUS II, while we're at it (both sizes, of course).

[Chyros]

Great vid Mr. Sleeves.

Well yeah, but Ellipse doesn't repro F122s xD .

I know you wish he would!

Let's be frank here — all of us here want more repro sizes, other than just the F62 and F77. In no particular order: TKL, unsaver, F107, full-size and battleship (and leftnav and monitor as well, but that's probably just me). Should we run a poll or what?

Very true. And let's be honest; if there's one board that deserves it, it's the Model F. I think even a beamspring wouldn't satisfy quite as many people (due to the height).

[darkcruix]

Very true. And let's be honest; if there's one board that deserves it, it's the Model F. I think even a beamspring wouldn't satisfy quite as many people (due to the height).

Not only the height, I assume. I think $350 is already heavy and a beam spring with discrete switches, which are more complicated to build would be at a price range of $5 to produce (each). Think about 84 keys of that ... you would be above $400 alone with switches and not having any case, pcb, controller (or profit).

[JP!]

Very true. And let's be honest; if there's one board that deserves it, it's the Model F. I think even a beamspring wouldn't satisfy quite as many people (due to the height).

Not only the height, I assume. I think $350 is already heavy and a beam spring with discrete switches, which are more complicated to build would be at a price range of $5 to produce (each). Think about 84 keys of that ... you would be above $400 alone with switches and not having any case, pcb, controller (or profit).

I would think that the beam spring modules could be scaled down in size but they would not be inexpensive to produce. When you consider every component in the originals it's not hard to see why the beam springs and Model F's were so expensive in their day.

[darkcruix]

Very true. And let's be honest; if there's one board that deserves it, it's the Model F. I think even a beamspring wouldn't satisfy quite as many people (due to the height).

Not only the height, I assume. I think $350 is already heavy and a beam spring with discrete switches, which are more complicated to build would be at a price range of $5 to produce (each). Think about 84 keys of that ... you would be above $400 alone with switches and not having any case, pcb, controller (or profit).

I would think that the beam spring modules could be scaled down in size but they would not be inexpensive to produce. When you consider every component in the originals it's not hard to see why the beam springs and Model F's were so expensive in their day.

I would expect that a "Modern Beam Spring" would cost the customer $650, even if you would mass produce it with very low margin and some sacrifices. Can you imagine that your keyboard costs more than the average computer? Many of us would probably say "hell yeah", but the average buyer would turn away. Look at the Surface Go from Microsoft - it comes without keyboard.