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Keyboards really are terrible today, I think.

Plasma said:
There are lots of companies making mechanical keyboards, but you won't find them at OfficeMax. I would put Leopold near the top for build quality. iKBC is also pretty good and less expensive.
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The high priests of keyboard snobdom are going to yell at me for admitting I'm this easily pleased, but I absolutely love the dirt cheap Cherry knockoffs you can buy on Amazon for under $40. I've bought four of them under various sketchy brand names ("Y-YOOSO", "EDJO"), and so far as I can tell regardless of the name they're sold under they're all using the same switches. A more well-known vendor is "Redragon"; their products sure look like they come from the same factories. They cost a few more bucks, but they *do* also at least have an actual website and other formal signs of support, which might be a consideration.

These things offer a choice of "Blue" (*really clicky*, my favorite), "Brown" (not so clicky), and "Red" (not clicky but more throw than a rubber dome) switches and I find they work remarkably well, especially for what they cost compared to the horrendous dreck Logitech will sell you at the same price point. There is of course a downside to these keyboards: They're sold as "gamer" keyboards and almost uniformly have rainbow-colored LED backlights to illuminate a clear key legend instead of normal "serious" keycaps. (And, of course, they offer a selection of silly patterns you can blink or pulse the lights with, if you're so motivated.) But if you can get around how ridiculous they look there's actually a plus to this: by necessity the light-pipe keys are double-shot molded so the legend is *never* going to wear off. I suppose the LED under it could go bad someday, but I haven't had any fail for over three years. (Putting all the keyboards like this I have together that's over 400 LEDs.)

Below is a picture of the keyboard I use as the daily driver on my work computer. I know, it looks utterly ridiculous, but... I paid $12.99 each for a pair of them in 2021. (They were 60% off for some kind of Amazon flash sale.) The round keycaps are weird, sure, but they grew on me and the keyboard's base is satisfyingly heavy with good rubbery feet to keep it from sliding around.

cheap_keyboard.jpg

As dumb as this keyboard looks I would recommend it, even at full price, to anyone... if it were still around. ;) But seriously, for $13 I feel like I stole it, especially considering the Redragon K552 for $42 is pretty much the same thing.

The hobby computer has an E-YOOSO K600 like this, but with more normal keycaps, because the ten-key pad is more useful there. The Redragon equivalent appears to be the K551; the keycaps are identical to the ones on my E-YOOSO.

Again, I've "only" had these for three years so I can't say if they'll last as long as a Model M. Heck, they almost certainly won't, but that $13 keyboard has been pounded hard five days a week for that time and it still works beautifully. I dunno, maybe the purple LEDs in the second to bottom row might be a little dimmer than when it was new, but... I think I can live with that.
 
Eudimorphodon said:
more well-known vendor is "Redragon"; their products sure look like they come from the same factories.
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I bought a redragon K605 as a joke because I think it’s hilarious. It’s a 200% keyboard. Almost useless, but I think it might be good if you work wearing welding gloves or something. ;)

IMG_2463.jpeg
 
jafir said:
I bought a redragon K605 as a joke because I think it’s hilarious. It’s a 200% keyboard. Almost useless, but I think it might be good if you work wearing welding gloves or something. ;)
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Woah. That's... really a thing, huh?

When one of the kids was a baby I bought them one of these. Weird to see one that looks like it's for grownups.
Crayola-EZ-Type-Keyboard_1.jpg
 
Chuck(G) said:
That's good to know, thanks. What's that funny key between the left Ctrl and Alt? :)
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Unicomp still sells a "Classic 101" with no Windows keys, which is as close to a new production model M as you can get. I have been using them for years.
They aren't just an imitation; I believe they are even made on the same machinery/molds (IBM Lexington -> Lexmark -> Unicomp).
I agree that they are cheapened somewhat as compared to the 1980s IBM ones. I believe some of the cheapening happened under Lexmark and then some further under Unicomp. A common point of criticism is if you flip them over, you can see where the speaker hole is on a "real" model M, it looks like someone hand-patched the mold to get rid of it.
 
Yes, most keyboards these days are total junk. The worst in my opinion, more because of the deception than their mechanisms, are the ones that try to look like "gamer" keyboards, but are still mushy rubber domes underneath. I regularly visit the nearby by-the-pound Goodwill, so I get to see (and poke at) a lot of keyboards. Every now and then I find a mechanical one. I found an ONN "Gaming Keyboard" with LEDs yesterday. I don't know enough about mechanical keys to identify them, but they have blue stems that look like "[+]", and they sound like clacky blue keys.

Half the reason I love finding "junk" mechanical keyboards for $1.79/lb is that if I ever get around to making some kind of keyboard PCB (I'd love one for the TRS-80 Model I), I'll have plenty of donor switches. (The first in line is going to be the one that's wireless but not Bluetooth.)

I've also got a few Northgate keyboards from the '90s, they were a favorite of Jerry Pournelle.
 
I suppose if I were an original freak, I could pay my $200 or so and get a real vintage M from clickykeyboards.com. I've used CK for parts orders and they're nice folks.
I used to have a Chicony XT-era keyboard that was even louder than the Model F.
 
Bruce Tomlin said:
I found an ONN "Gaming Keyboard" with LEDs yesterday. I don't know enough about mechanical keys to identify them, but they have blue stems that look like "[+]", and they sound like clacky blue keys.
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Judging from the pictures online that's another example straight from the Redragon/E-YOOSO/whatever parts bin. It's totally worth a $1.79 a pound and, yes, it would make a good donor for a keyboard project. Some of these keyboards even have "hot swappable" key mechanisms, IE, they essentially cover the motherboard with tight metal pin sockets for the key mechanisms so *serious* gamer bois can experiment with mixing different key types on the same board.(*)

(* FWIW, I wouldn't recommend those for actual work. One of the boards I own does have that feature, and while it's "mostly fine" it experiences the occasional keybounce which I suspect is due to iffy connections in those sockets. But one of those would be a great source of switches and keycaps for some other project.)

The switches themselves are close clones of the matching Cherry switch types (cherry blue/brown/whatever) and are keycap compatible. I can pull keys off the old Wyse WY-50 terminal keyboard with genuine 80's-vintage MX Blacks I used for my frankenstien Tandy 1000 built and swap them onto the gamer board. (And vice-versa.) It's pretty cheap to get completely custom keysets screen-printed these days, to you could rank customability as a plus for these things in general.
 
I use a few Red Dragon K556 RGB and the model without the numbers pad (USB). They have the brown key switches and I got them on eBay used dirt cheap.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Yesterday, I dropped off a few Fedex packages at the local OfficeMax (more convenient than taking them to the Fedex Store and I can also grocery shop in the same mall). You know, OfficeMax, the place that sells $150 chair mats and $30 plastic milk crates. I went down the "keyboard" aisle and tried a few. Ye gods, they were all terrible; they felt cheap, with short key travel and little tactile feedback. I guess that I've been spoiled all these years with my Model Ms on just about every system (but for a couple of older Keytronic/Honewell keyboards).

Who today makes reasonably-priced keyboards that feel like real keyboards?
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Define "reasonably priced".... :p

I love my Model M. And I don't think you will ever find a new 1:1 replacement. At least I never did.

I did find the Corsair K95 with BROWN switches. Its much quieter than the M, but feels about right. Yea, I'm not a fan of the RGB, but you can easily turn it off, or set it to anything you want. I happen to like this keyboard enough, that I bought two. one for my gaming machine, and another that I use for my work computer. I LOVE the macro keys for when I need to dump repeated info on emails. Its a solid board, and I've had zero issues with mine. *knocks on wood*

I think the best recommendation of a product is; would you buy it again. Even at $200, I feel good about the purchase.

without looking, I know they make these key-switch samplers, for a marginal cost.
 
I hope that the era of keyboard scavenging is at an end. There are a galaxy of high-quality switches and keycaps available new now. You can even get new beamsprings.

If anything, it's nice to be able to pick modern layouts.
 
Chuck(G) said:
That's good to know, thanks. What's that funny key between the left Ctrl and Alt? :)
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Meta, which is sort of a "second Alt." I don't have a huge amount of stuff bound to it (and I think nothing in my window manager), but it's useful enough that I would definitely try to avoid getting a keyboard without it. (And I'm not even an Emacs user!)

I'm not sure if non-Unix operating systems can make use of this key, though. Nor do I know what that funny symbol on top of it is.
 
Chuck(G) said:
I think it's shorthand for ctrl-esc.
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Well, it certainly isn't in Linux. I have, for example, certain emulators for old machines where I bind meta-keys to emulator actions. E.g., Ctrl+P and Alt+P will both just be passed straight into the emulator, but Meta+P will pause the emulator. (As I said, it's a sort of "second Alt" that just gives you yet more shift-style combinations of keys. Emacs users sometimes go even beyond Shift/Ctrl/Alt/Meta, adding also Bucky and Double-bucky.)
 
I purchased a new Northgate 101 keyboard mail over in 1992 I think it was for probably $50+ which would be $120 or so in today's dollars and that was the most expensive keyboard I ever purchased new. Blowing $200 on a new keyboard today when decent used mechanicals are pretty cheap is not something I would do.

Used the Northgate for a very long time until USB keyboards were common and going back and forth between layouts that were slightly different slowed me down. When I got into retro computing, I dug that Northgate out again and snagged a more expensive Ultra T model that ended up on one of my Amiga 2000's. Thats when I started stocking up of all kinds of retro keyboards and multiple Model M's which I still use.

I do have to admit that the keyboard I use the most these days is a non-mechanical Red Dragon S101-BA-2 because it has a decent feel, rubberized keys, and it's not loud when I am up late typing away. I actually like the backlit keys as long as they are one color only (blue is my choice), can be dialed down a bit, and don't flash in patterns. I also have some crappy new keyboards I get at discount stores for use on systems I am testing out (and they are only a few bucks each and I don't care if I drop them).
 
Chuck(G) said:
That's good to know, thanks. What's that funny key between the left Ctrl and Alt? :)
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You're missing out, you should upgrade like I did back in the late '90s :LOL:

keyboard.jpg

There was something I found for Windows 95/98 that let me remap that key so I could hit Win-E for Explorer, etc.

It sure looks dirtier from that angle..
 
DougM said:
I'm typing on a Unicomp right now and none of those things are true in my case. Though I did buy it a long time ago, so quality may have degraded.

The only 2 things that are different between this one and the model M in the other room is that the sound is different and, weirdly, keyboard plaque is horrible. I don't have this problem on the M's but this keyboard looks like it came out of a mud bog.

One of the things I did notice is that USB keyboards act a little differently than mini-DIN keyboards in the case where multiple keys are pressed at the same time. The Mini-DIN's don't register the additional keys where the USB ones do. This probably isn't important except on a few applications, but I happen to have one of those applications (linuxCNC). So in that case I use modern keyboards.
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I bought a Unicomp New Model M in early 2022 and have a few clicky Model Ms.
I agree - they are pretty good.
I suspect if they added steel plates or something to up the weight many of the complaints would go away.
YMMV though, as I prefer the rubber dome Model Ms like a weirdo
 
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