F104+SSK+122+62+77+50+Ergo orders now open! New Kishsaver+Industrial Model F Keyboards

[Muirium]

Disgusting practice by Apple, assuming there's no other way to achieve the same functionality, I wonder how come they haven't been

I doubt there's enough money in it to dare take on their lawyers, and it's a pretty technical point for anyone but an especially nerdy keyboard enthusiast. (Raises hand.) Besides, third party keyboards work fine—I’m on one now, with its very own (HHKB) Fn—you just don't get that one key. Bring your own 'fn Fn!

Worth noting: Apple's been slowly migrating Fn into the globe key. Here it is on their current laptops:

Spoiler:

The icon is the primary legend on my M1 Air here, too, with fn as the secondary. I gather globe is a separate modifier key on iPadOS:

Spoiler:

Seems to be something they're awkwardly on the fence about bringing to the Mac. It's printed there, but so was Alt on the Option key for decades.

Spoiler:

The only use I have for is to open the "Emoji & Symbols palette", where I just picked the icon from. Naturally, as I’m into Karabiner, I did in fact implement this with a simple system-wide remap from the utterly useless Insert key, so even my HHKB has it for those occasions nothing other than an eggplant will do.


Edit:

Actually, I forgot about the keyboard Modifier Keys setting in System Preferences. It used to look like this:

Spoiler:

And now it looks like this:

Spoiler:

System Preferences > Modifier Keys > MacBook Air.png (270.16 KiB) Viewed 5423 times

Okay, so how about a third party keyboard?

Spoiler:

System Preferences > Modifier Keys > HHKB.png (268.31 KiB) Viewed 5423 times

Oh hey, Fn's there! But wasn't it supposed to be ?

[Ellipse]

So in the newest Apple OS update you can set the Fn key and there is no longer a need to update the keyboard ID to get all of the Mac keyboard functionality?

Muirium would it be ok to include your screenshots in the manual? They are very helpful to see how to change keyboard keys on a Mac.

[Ellipse]

Here is a very interesting post discussing the differences between small scale and large scale hardware manufacturing as reported by a forum member who was involved in the latter. It is a great read. Here is the original post that I have quoted below: viewtopic.php?p=513306#p513306

This is an interesting discussion. del20nd you mentioned your experience in hardware manufacturing? Anything (details, best practices, advice, etc.) you are able to share, if it is appropriate?

Sure! I can talk about the subject generally, without going into the nitty-gritty specifics of how the company was run. (That information probably wouldn't help too much anyway, as they worked on a very different scale than this project. In fact, to that end, watching your google talk about the small scale you're working on was fascinating because of how it compared to larger scale manufacturing.)

Quick background for perspective on where I'm coming from:

My experience in manufacturing comes from four years of recently developing for, supporting and maintaining the ERP system of a medium scale US based appliance manufacturer in the role of a software analyst. The platform their ERP ran on was an IBM AS/400 / iSeries / Power System. In other words, the platform that 122 key Model F/M keyboards are actually intended to be used on . I've moved on from this particular company, but am still generally working on the IBM platform.

For those that don't know, an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system is more-or-less the backbone software package that any large corporation uses to track their business. Distribution centers, manufacturers, insurance companies, grocery store chains, etc all use ERPs that are tailored to their specific business needs. There's leeway in how these get used from company to company (some are allot more paper oriented than others), and they range from being out-of-the-box installs to extremely customized. In extremely generalized terms, a manufacturer might use an ERP to track Bills of Material, Material Orders, Finished goods, payroll, resource planning, shipments, invoices, audit history, etc, etc, etc. Which of those things, and in what capacity they're used, will vary wildly from one business to another.

Given that the ERP touches basically everything in the company, that I went out of my way to learn how the business was run (because I'm a bit of a knowledge sponge), and I happened to be employed during one of the most frantic, disruptive periods in modern manufacturing history, which required allot of out-of-the-box thinking to keep operations moving along, I have a decent thousand yard view of how it all comes together.

So anyway...

Tips and stuff:

I guess in general, given that it's such a completely different ecosystem, be wary of tips from anybody working in medium to large scale manufacturing . You already know this, but the general knowledge around making 1,000 of something is wildly, wildly different than the general knowledge around making a million of something. In seeing how you overcame obstacles, I was starting to wonder, for example, if scale played into why you went for aluminum cast casings instead of plastic for the new keyboards, even though nobody would've batted an eye at plastic since it's "period correct" for the newest project: I started looking into it and it seemed like maybe the die casts for aluminum at a small scale, combined with the higher labor cost made more economic sense for you than investing in the very expensive injection molds that would be required to make plastic parts, even though there'd be a labor savings. Or maybe, if it didn't save money directly, if the cost difference was small enough to justify the higher quality case.

I don't need to tell you that your keyboard shouldn't be managed the same way as a production line churning out 6 million CD players of course, but I do see allot of questions like "why is this keyboard $420 when it doesn't even come with X Y Z premium super-premium 25 year warranties that [really big manufacturer] offers," and I think this is just people not realizing how much scale plays into the pricing we see on electronics today, and how spoiled we all are by that. These keyboards cannot ever have the same economy of scale as Logitech, that the margins on these boards may actually be lower than what a big manufacturer pulls, and you have to be realistic about what things cost when there's one person working on making only a few thousand of them!

If I try to think of something that could maybe broadly apply, while it wouldn't make a lick of sense for you to buy into a major ERP platform given your scale, especially because you're the only one touching the data, it might make sense for you to come up with data management conventions that mimicked the structure of an ERP if you haven't already.

I'm not sure how you're doing this now, but at the absolute minimum I'd have a religiously kept system to track incoming parts, bills of material to assemble orders, material orders for what's required for each variant of keyboard assembly, finished goods, invoices, etc. This organization is key to how larger manufacturers are able to turn around product. Keeping that info well tracked would definitely be helpful if you ever scaled up how much you're making. Given that I didn't work at such a small scale, I don't know what's on the market in this regard, or if maybe you're just really, really good at keeping Excel spreadsheets in order, but the big guys who are growing are very careful/organized with their data.

I'm probably not too useful on how to manage your supply chain; I did work with those guys but didn't do their job. I can say that it's a very quick moving, adaptive field, especially in the last few years. I guess I could apply that to your situation by saying to be creative in how you overcome bottlenecks? For example, if your supplier suddenly decided that they're not going to powder coat the cast aluminum keyboard casings, don't rule out doing something like importing them unpainted and contracting somebody local, even an auto body shop. As long as you keep those processes well documented so you know what works and what doesn't. Supply setbacks are common, especially these days, but there are sometimes ways around them if you're creative, especially if you're the first one to think of the solution and can negotiate a price under the radar.

Another thing I can't really talk about is how to deal with overseas manufacturers, since our factories were domestic, and made particular effort to keep as much of the supply chain domestic as possible. We did have to contract out some parts where no domestic options existed (broad example, there's not one manufacturer in the US who makes electrolytic capacitors, so if you're a company that needs some of those you'll be working with an international supplier) but unfortunately all of my advice here is broad platitudes which are well known: be careful of your suppliers, as Chinese factories are notorious for ripping off patented designs. Given your scale, and the fact that you're not patenting anything, you might not have to worry about things like this.

***

That's all I can think off the top of my head.

Given what you've done here, you know way more than I do, but I'm smart enough to at least understand that I. I can make educated guesses about why you may or may not have made this-or-that choice, and can tediously explain to people in the Ars Technica comments section that no, you're not Samsung and no, you're not "ripping people off", that this is just what it costs to bring a few thousand Models F into the world, that it's actually a miracle that these things can be brought to maket so affordably at all and he's keeping prices this low by not having the overhead of multi-year warranties and 24/7 on-call support hotlines, that if you can't accept that small projects will inevitably cost more money then you're not in the market for one of these keyboards, please just buy a mass market mech board if you want to spend $100 or less, etc, etc....

If I do come up with anything else I'll try to remember to post it, and if you have any specific questions that maybe you want to try to jog my memory on, please feel free to PM or just reply here.

My reply:

This is a great read del20nd! Thanks for sharing it.

Regarding ERP I manage these projects using ERPNext (as well as with non-ERP offerings like Excel and Wordpress's Woocommerce), which helps with inventory management and accounting. We are dealing with more than one million parts so it would be more work to track this manually in another way. This way with ERPNext I can track how much quantity of each item is where (in my stock or at the factory), whether the quantity has been moved into an assembled unit, and what I am running low on and need to order more of.

Regarding metal, the original Model F 4704 keyboards were metal cased so I chose metal cases for the reproductions. For the Model M style cases I chose to continue with metal as I feel that a plastic case would be out of place for a high end keyboard. Unfortunately the aluminum case molds can not be switched to make some cases out of plastic or zinc (I looked into this) so everyone has to stay with aluminum. These keyboards are still quite heavy even with aluminum instead of zinc: the Classic F104 weighs about 8 pounds (!) excluding packaging, compared to about one more pound for the classic F77, even though the latter case is made of zinc and the former is aluminum.

[Arkku]

Disgusting practice by Apple, assuming there's no other way to achieve the same functionality, I wonder how come they haven't been sued about this.

I have no idea how apple keyboard function key is supposed to behave, since I don't have any apple computers, but Unicomp Spacesaver M keyboards (the ones made specifically for Mac) are configured like this:

The Apple Fn key is technically implemented by using a vendor-specific page, which is part of the USB HID standard. This allows specific vendors to add functionality with no risk of collision with other vendors' features. That is, Apple has to pick some keycode to represent their Fn key, and since it is a custom key, assigning one in the same "namespace" as is used by other manufacturers would be contrary to the standard and run the risk of being the same as picked by some other manufacturer.

Meanwhile, the vendor-specific page is specified to work only for the specific vendor id. That is, let's say Apple picks the keycode 3 for their Fn key on the vendor-specific page. Then, maybe Logitech makes a keyboard with some custom key to toggle some functionality in their driver software, and they also pick keycode 3 for that key. Technically both keys now send the same data over USB, but they are recognised as different because they are on the vendor-specific page and thus one is recognised as the Apple-specific code 3 and the other as Logitech-specific code 3.

So, this is actually how it is meant to work by the standard. Admittedly some of the key combinations that Apple uses the Fn key for could have been implemented as standard media keys, but the key itself doesn't really have a standard equivalent, and thus this is valid use of the standard's vendor-specific keys.


That being said, of course it is really annoying for anyone else making a keyboard for use with Apple devices, since it's not "officially" possible to exactly duplicate the Fn key without needing custom drivers (and those are not possible on iPads, which is what I'm using to type this message).

Still, the most common use of the Apple Fn key (for me at least) is to simulate some keys that are not present on the small keyboards, e.g., Fn + Up is Page Up. All of this is possible to do in keyboard firmware with a non-Apple Fn key. The two functions that I don't know of a workaround for are:

• Fn + mouse click, which is mainly used to select text in Apple's Terminal without sending the mouse movement to software running in it (however, if you use some other terminal app, this is not an issue).
• Fn key alone (either press or double tap), which is used to trigger some system functionality depending on device and user preferences, e.g., changing keyboard layout (or showing emoji picker) or double tap to trigger voice recognition – these use only the Fn key so it has to be the the correct one, but of course all of the functionality is available through other means (albeit maybe less convenient to access)

So, I would say that 95% of Fn key uses can be solved without having the actual Apple Fn key, and the remaining 5% can be worked around. Still, I did customise my firmware to pretend to be an Apple Keyboard...

[Arkku]

Worth noting: Apple's been slowly migrating Fn into the globe key.

Yes, good point; I believe they are technically the same key, but just printed with a different legend, and at least the Fn key on older Apple keyboards works as the Globe key when plugged into an iPad (for example).

The name for the key seen in settings is Globe only for recognised new keyboards where they know the key has that legend, and everywhere else it is still called Fn... (Karabiner Elements pretends to be a new keyboards so it gets the Globe.)

the utterly useless Insert

A bit off topic, but I have the side button on my mouse mapped to Insert, and use that as a custom binding – practically a free key to map to whatever without risk of collision. =)

[Arkku]

So in the newest Apple OS update you can set the Fn key and there is no longer a need to update the keyboard ID to get all of the Mac keyboard functionality?

The setting is "what to do when the Fn key is pressed", not "which key to use as Fn". I tried by plugging a full third-party USB keyboard (without custom firmware) to latest macOS, and I can confirm the same settings are available as seen in the screenshot above, but none of the keys on the keyboard register as the Fn key by default.

Still, it is possible from the same settings screen to map one of the other keys to be Fn, so it would be possible, for example, to map Caps Lock to Ctrl and Ctrl to Fn, but unfortunately it is not possible to do it only on one side (e.g., it would be great to map right Ctrl to Fn, but this setting does both). And "of course" they only offer those keys (that are seen in the screenshot) for remapping, not every key.

So, I think Karabiner Elements is still the way to go for software remapping, e.g., map the physical key to Insert in firmware and then Insert to Globe/Fn in Karabiner Elements, as suggested by Mu above.

(Also, note that if you want a physical key to work both as Apple Fn when pressed alone and also do some non-Apple key combinations, such as Fn + number sending the F-keys, you still need custom firmware. My patch to QMK can do that, but I have not updated it to latest QMK since I'm mostly using my own firmware nowadays.)

[Muirium]

Muirium would it be ok to include your screenshots in the manual? They are very helpful to see how to change keyboard keys on a Mac.

Yes, use them if you like. All of them contain other keyboard names, though, as I don’t have one of yours.

A small correction: Apple renamed System Preferences to Settings on the Mac. I used the old name out of habit.

And a small tip: by far the easiest way to find the Modifier Keys section in Settings now is to do a text search for it. They really messed up the whole app’s design!

[cap]

On my 2019 Macbook Pro's preferences panel for modifiers, the internal keyboard shows a fn key and my F77 shows a globe key. I did not expect this and I would like to know what scancode is interpreted as the globe key on the Mac. I do run Karabiner so maybe that intervenes in what modifier keys the OS thinks I have?

Internal keyboard, 2019 Macbook Pro:

Spoiler:

macbook_modifiers.jpg (164.2 KiB) Viewed 5205 times

F77 keyboard, VIAL firmware:

Spoiler:

f77_keyboard_modifiers.jpg (161.07 KiB) Viewed 5205 times

Edit: Arkku, above, explained my observations. My Macbook keyboard does not have a globe legend, MacOS knows this, and presents it as fn in the UI. Karabiner presents my F77 as a new-style keyboard, so it gets the globe icon. I still would like to know how to teach my F77 firmware to actually send the globe.

[tyrantcyan]

Arer there any pictures of the first samples of the full cases for both the ssk and 122 yet?

[Ellipse]

tyrantcyan the case photos for all the M Style cases were posted around 4/1 and they are also on each of the product pages on the project web site.

[tyrantcyan]

Do you have a picture of the bottom case? Im interested in seeing how the bent bottom looks.

Is the bottom also aluminum?

[Arkku]

I still would like to know how to teach my F77 firmware to actually send the globe.

I assume you mean how to get the firmware itself to send it, without the Karabiner Elements (which you are already using, and that can do it by remapping a key) or macOS keyboard settings (where you can change one of the Ctrl, Option, Cmd, or Caps Lock keys to be treated as Fn/Globe).

In that case you need a modified firmware where you send Apple's USB vendor id and the product id of an Apple keyboard, and where the firmware supports sending the Apple Fn key, which is not a normal keycode but a "vendor-specific" keycode, which means the USB HID report must be edited to include this value. (See my earlier post or two if you want to know more about the technical details.)

I have a fork of the QMK firmware where the branch apple_fn has both the patch to make this possible as well as support for the F77 keyboard: https://github.com/arkku/qmk_firmware/t ... e/apple_fn (details about the patch in the Gist). You still need to change the USB vendor and product ids for the keyboard in keyboards/xwhatsit/brand_new_model_f/f77/wcass/config.h (currently; once I get around to updating this to latest QMK version, the file will be keyboards/xwhatsit/brand_new_model_f/f77/info.json). Change the vendor id to Apple's (0x05AC) and the product id to that of some Apple keyboard with an Fn key (e.g., 0x021E is ok for ISO layout). Then edit keymap (you can use the web editor and copy over the JSON) to include a key KC_APFN (plain Apple Fn key with only Apple's keyboard combinations) or APFN_LAYER(3) where the 3 is the number of your Fn mappings layer. This key will produce the Apple Fn key when pressed alone, but if you press another key it will release the Fn key and instead send the key from the layer (3, in this example). You can also map individual keys like APFN_KEY(KC_F1) which will send both Apple Fn and F1 when pressed.

If the above sounds daunting, or if you want to use my AAKBD firmware (which might be better in some ways than the QMK-based ones, but is definitely worse in terms of community support, since the support is just me), you can download the zip file from the latest release and pick one of the pre-compiled firmwares with "apple" in the name: https://github.com/arkku/aakbd/releases. (That precompiled firmware, if I recall correctly, has the Apple Fn key either on the split key next to Right Shift, or on Right Ctrl if the Right Shift is not split. I believe there may be one incorrectly mapped key in some ANSI layout configuration, as was reported to me by a user; I believe they were going to send me the fix.)

You can of course also customise it by editing the layers.c file according to your preferences, see the README.md for instructions.

Unfortunately there is no simple option for customisation (such as with a web editor), so basically it's either pick a precompiled firmware or compile one yourself. But Karabiner Elements is not a bad option if you only use the keyboard on your own Mac.

[cap]

Arkku, thank you for the detailed notes on compiling QMK such that Mac will recognize the Apple Fn/Globe key. I could work through that if it really becomes a necessity for me.

For now, I'm remapping Insert to Globe in Karabiner. That's a good solution. I'm interested in a keyboard-only solution mostly in the event that my employer cracks down harder on unapproved software installations, and I might have to live without Karabiner.

I suppose if I ever have to work without Karabiner, I could use the macOS keyboard settings to treat Caps Lock as Globe, as you suggest. I can easily live without a caps lock.

[Muirium]

Yes, remapping Caps Lock to another modifier is definitely smart use of such an easily reached key. I use it for Control, myself, in line with my HHKB and winkeyless boards.

is a bit tricky though, as accidentally hitting it by itself will bring up the character palette. You’ll learn to avoid that soon enough.

[cap]

Yes, remapping Caps Lock to another modifier is definitely smart use of such an easily reached key. I use it for Control, myself, in line with my HHKB and winkeyless boards.

is a bit tricky though, as accidentally hitting it by itself will bring up the character palette. You’ll learn to avoid that soon enough.

Like you, I put Control where the Caps Lock legend lives on modern keyboards. I was thinking I could map the physical Insert key to Caps Lock at the keyboard level, and then map Caps Lock to Globe on the host. Apple's modern extended keyboards have the Globe legend where Insert lives on PC keyboards, so this plan is at least consistent with Apple.

[Muirium]

That’s exactly what I do: Insert is meaningless on the Mac, and Apple’s put the fn key in that spot on their full-size keyboards since at least 2007 when they went aluminium. Might as well take the hint.

I consider a pretty secondary (even tertiary!) key, myself, so I don’t give it prime real estate. Indeed, I leave it where Insert lives on the HHKB (and my other 60% keyboards like my Kishsaver), which is on the function layer where I won’t accidentally trigger it.

[Arkku]

Like you, I put Control where the Caps Lock legend lives on modern keyboards.

Another option then is to swap Ctrl and Caps Lock in firmware, and then map Caps Lock (which is now at the lower left corner, where the Ctrl key would normally be) to Globe/Fn. That also coincides with the Fn key location on actual Apple keyboards.

The only reason I'm not doing this myself is that I have become accustomed to mapping Caps Lock to Cmd on Mac on to Ctrl on Windows, so "Caps Lock" + C is always copy, no matter what platform I'm on.

[Muirium]

Smart move if multi-platforming. Dancing modifiers drive me nuts the rare times I touch Windows. Alt and Option especially, given how heavily I rely on word by word cursor movement.

[ifohancroft]

1 (5).jpg

Uggh, the picture doesn't seem to be showing. I'm talking about the ErgoDox.

I've been meaning to comment about this for awhile now, but I'm so happy that there's an ErgoDox version. Thank you Ellipse!
P.S. I haven't really followed the topic since this post of yours and haven't checked the website recently, so forgive me if the following questions have already been answered:

1. Is this an actual version or is it just a render?
2. Is it currently available or will it become available in the future?
3. What cable is between the two halves?
4. Can either half be used on its own?
5. Are the ports on each half interchangeable? I.e. can I use whichever port on each half to connect it to the PC or to the other half or does each half have a dedicated PC port and a dedicated "other half" port?
6. What firmware will it use?

[nik137]

The details on the ergodox model can be found here: https://www.modelfkeyboards.com/product ... -keyboard/

Unfortunately, it operates like two separate keyboards without a direct connection between the two halves. I would be very interested if someone has a plan on how to fix this and have a shared matrix between the two halves. As it stands this (combined with the potentially hefty price) is a dealbreaker for me, I am very used to my layout that has multiple layers that stretch across both halves.

Other than that, I would be a dream come true and I would order one instantly if there is a way to retrofit some kind of solution.

[del20nd]

Question on the F104:

Does the numpad have live sensors mounted in the "dead" spots (ie- are there two sensors under the '+', 'enter' and '0' keys) for if we wanted to add extra buttons to the numpad cluster?

Might be useful if, for example, you wanted to add tab, backtab, and a comma key for spreadsheet processing.

[Ellipse]

del20nd - yes on the F104 and FSSK.

ifohancroft yes it is a real photo. Please head over to the Model F Ortholinear product page on the project web site for details. They are regular USB ports so they do not need a dedicated port. Firmware will be QMK and hopefully Via/Vial.

tyrantcyan yes the bottom is also aluminum. All top and bottom case parts are metal for the various projects. Attached are the photos of the bottom case part, as installed on a Classic M Style case FSSK. Please note that these photos are of prototypes whose case bottoms were rejected because the screws were improperly recessed and the bottom did not properly align with the contours of the case top (the bolts should be fully recessed and flush with the case bottom and the case bottom should not extend beyond the contours of the case top, and the parts should line up in the front and back though they do not in the sample). The tops had other QC issues as noted in a prior post (casting defects, mold lines, improperly drilled holes for the screws, etc.). The pair of adjacent holes on the bottom are for mounting a solenoid, which can now be done directly and the L bracket mount is no longer needed. These holes should have been recessed so the screws do not stick out of the bottom. The P clip and solenoid driver have individual, dedicated mounting posts inside the keyboard, on the case top.

Rejected case samples:

2023-04-18_11-18-33.jpg (889.87 KiB) Viewed 4662 times

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[Irving]

So pertaining Mac and ISO-DE I understand the following. Trying to compile what I have learnt now. Please add/correct me if I am wrong:

By default, the (Classic Style FSSK) Model F Keyboard
o does not support the Apple fn key as physical Apple fn key
o One can configure the Ctrl, Opt and Cmd keys in the MacOS Settings
o stuff like German layout with @ on L key is not a matter of keyboard, it is just the key codes on the board's side, created by pressing e.g. Opt and L. The keycode itself is then interpreted by the OS and turned into a character
o (MacOS) Shortcuts and media keys are just the same. And the keyboard firmware already caters for them
o Not offered with dual printed function keys (F1..13 prints and media/system shortcut prints)
o Offered with Control, Option and Command key as well as several others like delete to the right, etc.

Alternative 1:
Use Karabiner to reconfigure all the above and to have any other key acting as the fn key to leave the keyboard's firmware untouched. Good if keyboard used with one computer only and if using it for Win computers as well.

Alternative 2:
Use custom firmware to reach all of the above to have a stand-alone Mac ISO-DE Classic Style FSSK Model F Keyboard.

Another thing that caught my interest once I read about QMK:

--> My dream would be to have a dual use keyboard firmware by supporting both the original Win-ISO-DE layout and a MacOs ISO-DE. The QMK layering should support this: Layers 0-2 for say Mac. Then some key combination to get to layers 3-5 for Win and back. Is that feasible? Did some of you ever do this?

[Ellipse]

Here are some photos of the rejected F122 case. Inside are the bottom and top inner assemblies. The factory did not properly drill the internal holes to attach the bottom inner assembly, so that is why the inner assembly looks too sunken in the photos (it is loose and not properly installed). Also the LED overlay is a rejected sample (incorrect color).

You can see the rust on the steel top inner assembly plate as the plate was not powdercoated, so it starts to rust quite quickly. When I was restoring a late 1930s/early 1940s metal case clock a few years back (including removing the old paint finish), the bare clock case would develop a later of rust within minutes (!) of air exposure. Drying the water off the clock and coating the clock case with oil helped slow this down so I could spray paint the case.

2023-04-18_20-31-17.jpg (1.02 MiB) Viewed 4578 times

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2023-04-18_20-34-41.jpg (1.25 MiB) Viewed 4578 times

[Ellipse]

I would like to quote another terrific post and share it on the project thread to help those who are on the fence about which keyboard to try. This one helps explain the differences between the Model F and Model M keyboard, better than how I have attempted to describe it:

viewtopic.php?f=2&p=513447#p513447

Resurrecting this thread because the exact same rant on reddit is among the top google results when you type in "IBM Model F vs Beamspring." I want to respond to that but don't have a reddit account anymore.

The link to that thread is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyb ... eamspring/

For reference, I have a combined 14-ish years experience typing on the F and M. About 6 years on an F122 and 8 on a beige logo M. The F122 is my current daily.

My opinion echoes others: the M is a fantastic keyboard, but the F is noticeably better. The technical differences between the switches are minor on paper, but they become amplified when you adapt a light typing style, and compound further if you have to type allot.

The light typing style is the key here: if you're a heavy typist, there's almost no difference between an F and M. When you type lightly, the small details in the design start to creep up. Both keyboards allow for light typing due to how buckling springs work in general, but the lighter keystroke that the F's capacitive switch uses, combined with the ever-so-slightly more accurate "snappier" feeling actuation, add up to a more accurate feeling, less fatiguing board overall.

These are differences you feel a little bit moment-to moment, but allot more after extended typing sessions. If you're typing a one page essay, this may not be noticeable at all. If you're typing 20 pages of documentation or coding all day, 5 days a week, the M becomes noticeably more fatiguing and less accurate than the F. Not a bad board, I must emphasize, just noticeably not as good as the original!

The M's greatest merit is ultimately in its value proposition: it's most of the board that a Model F is, at roughly 25% of the price. Arguably the best "bang for buck" on the market today. It's way down the ladder on the law of diminishing returns when compared to a Model F, and allows people who would never dream of spending $420 for a computer keyboard to have a fantastic typing experience. It's seriously impressive how much of the key feel they were able to preserve given how much they streamlined the production.

The F is closer to perfection. It's not a great value like the M, and the differences between the two boards are ultimately not mind blowing, but sometimes it's worth reaching for that next level up in design perfection.

Especially if you type as much as I do. On that note, sorry for yet another long post

[Arkku]

--> My dream would be to have a dual use keyboard firmware by supporting both the original Win-ISO-DE layout and a MacOs ISO-DE. The QMK layering should support this: Layers 0-2 for say Mac. Then some key combination to get to layers 3-5 for Win and back. Is that feasible? Did some of you ever do this?

Yes, that's the setup I use on my keyboards. It's basically like this:

• Layer 0 is the default (Mac or Windows, depending on which one I use more with that keyboard)
• Layer 1 is the differences between Mac and Windows, rest of the keys pass through
• Layer 2 is the default Fn layer (activated by holding the Fn key on layer 0)
• Layer 3 is the other platform's Fn layer (activated by holding the Fn key on layer 1)

Both Fn layers (2 and 3) have a key that toggles layer 1 on/off to change the platform.


For the keyboards that I primarily use on Mac, I additionally use tweaks described above the make the Fn key on the Apple layer work as Apple Fn/Globe when pressed alone, but pressing it with another key releases the Apple Fn/Globe.

edit: For the differences between Mac and Windows, I change Caps Lock to be Cmd (Mac) or Ctrl (Win), swap the Alt keys with Windows/Cmd keys, and swap the places of the key to the right of left shift with the key to the left of 1 in the number row (this last bit is only necessary when you use Apple's USB vendor id, "PC" keyboards are swapped in software by default).

[Ellipse]

As an update pandrew has updated the QMK beta site to add the F104 and FSSK.

Please review the proposed F104 factory programming. I hope to start mailing out the Round 1 F104/FSSK boards Thursday/Friday of this week.

F104.png (66.78 KiB) Viewed 4378 times

[StrangerCoug]

IMO I think having the menu key to the left of the RAlt key instead of in between RAlt and RCtrl is a bit weird, but that's probably me being used to keyboards that aren't programmable in hardware. If you anticipate a lot of us not needing/wanting the menu key, then it's probably fine.

[StrangerCoug]

IMO I think having the menu key to the left of the RAlt key instead of in between RAlt and RCtrl is a bit weird, but that's probably me being used to keyboards that aren't programmable in hardware. If you anticipate a lot of us not needing/wanting the menu key, then it's probably fine.

Actually, come to think of it, is MO(1) the Fn key? If so, then that might be more useful in actual practice than a menu key (since the menu key typically does the same thing as the right mouse button).

[genericusername57]

I'm sorry if this has been a topic before but I didn't find anything when searching and it proved to be very difficult to try different terms to search for since the rate limit just keeps giving me random seconds to wait.

How do you control the solenoid extend/retract times when using QMK/VIA firmware? I've seen and understood the solenoid dwell time, but it seems this is not the same as extend/retract?

My issue is that the solenoid is way too slow to keep up with my typing (and I'm not exactly the fastest typist in the world). I tried downloading the IBM Capsense utility but it just says "no controller found" which I'm purely guessing is because I'm not using xwhatsit's firmware.