kbdfr wrote: 04 Sep 2019, 23:03
Anakey wrote: 04 Sep 2019, 22:11
[…]
I would say the flaws are due to the passage of time rather then a built in flaw, had the boards not worked from day 1 when they were made then yes i would agree that it was a flaw. However i doubt that any manufacturer that makes any product keeps a unit in less then favourable storage conditions for 20-30 years just to see if anything fails due to the passage of time.
Oh come on, IBM should have been able to know the rivets would break or the foam would disintegrate without testing. After all, they have produced quite a lot of other stuff which did not break or fall apart, so it’s simply they misconceived their keyboards right from the start:
- They wanted them to be loud because they thought the normal user would otherwise miss the typewriter sound.
- They wanted them to have different row heights like a typewriter, but not different keycap profiles because of production costs, so they conceived the curved plate, but neglected the tensions between non-flat plastic and metal parts.
It’s as simple as that: IBM keyboards are crap, and that’s exactly what makes them interesting for all the DT keyboard experts.
Mind you, there’s no irony there. I sincerely admire the eagerness and skills put to work by all that fine people.
A shame Cherry made keyboards which are simply intact after 25 to 30 years
I'm really not sure you're talking about IBM keyboards the same way I have seen them. I don't know how many IBM keyboards you've had, but I've owned about two dozen Model M keyboards; apart from one that was physically drowned (not something a Cherry board would've survived either, I can assure you), none of them malfunctioned. Even the drowned one, dead as it might've been, didn't feel scratchy, and that's DEFINITELY beyond the realm of Cherry. And we're talking about keyboards that I largely fished out of giant containers that've been sitting in English weather for a while, tossed about, sometimes with several TVs or other shite tossed on top of them.
And while Cherry boards are electronically (most certainly not physically, they did NOT come out of containers looking like they do in the brochures) fairly tough, order a couple dozen off of a Chinese recycler, and you'll see Cherry is no better than any of the brands you're so eager to bash – in fact, in plenty of cases, they're much, much worse. Again, I'm not sure how many you've seen come through sources like that. My experience with them is that you can't even tell whether it's supposed to be linear, tactile or clicky. You seem more than content to just focus on your one fancy Cherry board and not look at the bigger picture. I'd love to know what your background in them is, but my experience with >50 xth-hand G80s has really not been as good as yours appears to be. And the supposedly invulnerable G81s that some of your clique keep praising as invulnerable; yeah, I wish I still had that recycler batch of 40-odd of them. I kept the very best one, and even that one is so bad it'd make your fingers bleed just by looking at it. You know, after fishing the twigs and spider nests out of a Model M, it would generally really not be so bad as you're suggesting. Certainly not as bad as that G81!
Your point about getting IBMs restored being fun is partially true; I basically bolt-modded one of my Ms for fun, and re-foamed two F's for much the same reason. It was a fair bit of work, but worth it for the experience alone. Maybe one key wasn't as crisp or another, or something, and that's a good excuse to put yourself to do it. But it wasn't as much needed as a Cherry board in their condition would've needed it, and your point about old IBMs being crap because they're so hard to get working is frankly ludicrous.
In fact your favourite board, the Tipro, is so annoying to get working that I haven't reviewed one even though I've owned multiple for over FOUR YEARS. I took about five of them apart for just the switch tops (couldn't be arsed to desolder the whole switches, they weren't worth the effort) and a few fancy keycaps, because they weren't worth more than that to me – I tossed the rest. Nor would they be worth anything to anyone else; I don't see Tipros flying over eBay for many hundreds of dollars each the second they're posted!
Let me fix my unpopular opinion:
