Metal M — with F Springs. It’s MAGIC!!

Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Metal M — with F Springs. It’s MAGIC!!”.
It’S finally here the model: f: that’s not a Model F, the Holy Grail of old school, mechanical keyboards that are different than mechanical keyboards you’re. Thinking of, if you’re thinking of cherry switches and Cherry derivatives. Is it a hipster artisanal keyboard yeah, actually kinda, but that’s not why we like it capacitative, buckling spring technology, the model f, the model f, is the original keyboard that shipped with the IBM PC at least the key spring technology. Oh look, I happen to have one, it has a very unique ping sound – and this is the original layout notice that we don’t have the inverted T cursor. The function keys are over here instead of along the top of the keyboard, and they only go to F10. This keyboard layout is sub-optimal for a lot of reasons, because we hadn’t discovered it yet kind of like knob and tube electrical wiring will burn your house down if you’re not looking, it’s not quite as dangerous with the model f, but not a super amazing key layout. Again, satisfying metallic pings, okay, we’ve got plastic feet that stick up and some some cork on the bottom, but this keyboard cost a lot of money to make. It cost a lot of money to engineer, and here we are 35 37 years later, and it still works as good as the day it was made. In fact, I’ve converted it to USB before the model f, there was the beam spring, which is a ancient keyboard that has been recreated with modern, tooling again artisanal I reviewed this separately if you’re into beam spring or you didn’t know, definitely check that out, but beam Spring is a key technology, not as awesome as the buckling spring technology enter the model m key switch.

This is plastic, it has a metal back plate, but this is a modern design. With our inverted t-cursor. We don’t have Windows, keys or anything like that. This keyboard dates for the 13th of April 1988.. It likes a numeric keypad, so it was called a space, saver, ssk and IBM vernacular, but it does say, model m right on the back of it. Now it has a very similar metallic pink. It is a very similar buckling spring technology, but the physical flapper on the inside is smaller. This is actually technically a membrane keyboard. There is a membrane in here, whereas there is a printed circuit board this one similar to that inside the model f, and it was a hard, rigid, printed circuit board. You can use a PCB like that. One to Retro convert your model M into a Model: F style key switch, but because this is a membrane keyboard. This is really only two key rollover from a carpal tunnel and tactile sensation standpoint.

This is the superior switch this or the model f, I would say, but the two key rollover aspect sub-optimal and you’re not going to fix the two key rollover aspect unless you replace the membrane with something else. Well, we here I’ve been working on that others haven’t worked on that. This is a similar to the approach that folks on the desk Authority Forum have been using for the better part of a decade to replace the membrane in here with the printed circuit board and go on with life, not super standardized but doable. While the folks that have brought us the model – f – Recreation, not in a normal layout, previously Model, F, keyboards and the beam spring keyboard.

Finally, we have the marrying of those two things. This product is not a recreation of something that once existed. This is a modernization of something that never really was exactly all right.

So the first thing that we have in the Box are our numeric keypad keys, because I ordered this as a ssk variant rubber feet, including bolt-in rubber feet and some extra Model F style. Key flaps we’ve got our USB type-c cable. I’Ve got my invoice printed on, yes, tractor feed, dot, matrix paper and a handy dandy Model F operators guide, which has some important details, we’ll go over in a minute. This is it. This is the gray option which I think really probably should be labeled gray silver.

So this is a model m style layout, but [ Applause ] with the pingy Metallic Model, F key switch. So this keyboard has a lot of improvements over a 1988’s counterpart. First of all, this keyboard is not membrane. This is a capacitative keyboard, which means that it’s got a printed circuit board in it.

That’S how the key does its thing, and it has a capacitive flapper. The mechanism by which it knows the key has been pressed is a capacitor, not a resistor, not a plastic membrane, so this mechanism is a lot more durable will last forever. Although this 1988 keyboard still does work totally fine, but the most important thing is that this is in key rollover.

This keyboard, being in key rollover, of course, is pretty awesome. We got our full function row our full Escape key num, lock, screw lock caps lock. All of the stuff that you would really expect to see on Modern keyboard now, there’s no LEDs on the ssk version, whereas the version with the numeric keypad does include LEDs. There are headers in here if you want to add LEDs, but the ssk version from IBM. Also didn’t have LEDs not a big deal. The controller in here is a standardized controller. If you’re not in the world of programming and customizing, your keyboard controller, you really should get into that. It’S a lot of fun and, as you can see, we’ve got a couple of extra keys here, so you could do windows, keys or meta keys or alt keys or whatever you want, could reprogram caps lock, it’s all reprogrammable customizable, whatever you want to do, and most Of the keys that are more than one key wide as wide is backspace can actually be split into multiple keys. So if you wanted to split backspace into two keys, for example, because I got the repair kit and I’ve got the extra keys here, you could split backspace into two physical keys and add another keycap, and I have another scan code you can program.

So these are really customizable. This is a heavy metallic anodized aluminum case. It is actually metal and it is, you know, serious. It’S serious business and we’ve got some mounting holes for our bolt through feet that go on the back here.

So I got to take the screws off and put the back on that sort of thing. This is a tapered case, so you can see it has a tapered profile, it’s a little thinner at the front than the back, but oh boy, it’s very thick Now spoiler alert I’ve already been using this for about a week give or take. So you may notice some Mars and blemishes and that sort of thing in the description for the model f. It actually tells you hey.

This is uh. You know a lovingly handcrafted, basically aluminum case it’s going to have some little defects and I was like. Oh, that’s interesting, I wonder what that means, but you can kind of see in the corners and the cutouts for where the keys are, it doesn’t really perfectly align, and the depth of the keys is not consistent with the Contour of the actual metal case. See the these keys at the top Edge will sink well into the surface profile of the keyboard, whereas the keys at the bottom Edge not so much.

I don’t find this off-putting or anything that’s distracting, while I’m actually using the keyboard. Occasionally, when I’m typing and I go to hit a key in the top row, I will feel the edge of my finger brush the edge of the aluminum. Like you feel the case. It’S not even really annoying.

I just I’m aware it’s there. It’S a different field than on any of the other model M or Model F keyboards that I’ve been using since time immemorial in terms of has Model F, keyboards exactly perfectly recreated. The spring buckling feel clicky awesomeness of this and I’m happy to say. The answer is yes, there is a tiny asterisk, though we’ll talk about in a second love that mechanical feel there’s not really a lot else to say other than it’s expensive, but you know that’s, maybe a good way to open up into things.

You worry about just a little bit: okay, first off, you know the case. This is a very, very limited run. You know they’re going to make 100 200 of these in the first batch and see how people react to that. The market, for these kind of things is maybe a little bit saturated but they’ve recreated the mechanism the spring wires. It really is a labor of love to recreate these keyboards as exactingly as they have, and it really really is you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference between this and a keyboard like this. That rolled off the factory floor, even with the injection molded dye sub Keys, which is not a process, anybody wants to go through anymore because they’re expensive. So, as a result, the keyboard is expensive. Okay, I get it. However, the USBC cutout on the back, because I didn’t want to unpack the USBC cable here – this USBC cable fits perfectly, but for other USBC cables, that’s a little bit of a tight fit because of the plastic case. It’S a nice snug fit with the existing USBC cable, which is actually good because it relieves some mechanical strain on the controller’s USBC Port physically inside here. It wants to grab on the side of the case a little bit, but you can tell that it was cut out by some sort of you know. Cnc routing machine or something like that and the opening is just a little too small, depending on what type of USBC cable you have USBC.

Of course you know 510 gigabit. No, this is just. This is a keyboard. The keyboard is going to run at like a 1.2 megabit it doesn’t. You don’t need that? It is reprogrammable, though, which is nice. It has a bunch of Phillips head screws on the bottom, which will scratch the bejesus out of your desk, but it comes with all of the rubber feet. You need whether it’s stick on or actually bolt on, or in my case, I’m planning to run the two bolt-on keys at the back and two thinner feet at the front, which will give it even a little bit more of an angle. If I don’t actually take this PCB and retro replace it into this, you know model m style, ssk case.

I really don’t want to sacrifice one of my ssks. I’Ve got uh about 20 of of these keyboards in varying state of you know some from the typing station, some from the industrial version and they all work, but I kind of want to borrow the case from one and see if I can get this to work In the plastic case, because I actually, like the original IBM case, a little bit better than the solid metal case. Just because the cutouts for the keys are not perfectly spaced and because there are a couple little things with the manufacturing thing of the the case. But I don’t really care about it that much, but it is something to be aware of you cannotice it in the corners when you look and that sort of thing now, the worst thing that I’ve encountered is with the Escape key, and I think I can fix This this is not a big deal. This is a thing that you might run into so pay attention every now and then, when I press the Escape key, the spring buckles, but it doesn’t unbuckle until I wiggle or touch the key or tap on it and in the spring unclicks. This is pretty easily fixable. You just got to pop the corner off and just adjust the metal at the corner.

Here, I’ve not had it do it on any other key, including the arrow keys in the corner, or anything like that. It was just the Escape key. Just every now and then the spring will get stuck and it won’t unclick worst case scenario you can dive into the spare parts bag and put a replacement flapper in there. Just the analog variation from Spring to Spring is going to be enough to resolve that 99 out of 100 times, so you just have to swap your spring and your flapper, but most of the time you just have to take it apart and either tighten the screw In this corner, or something across here or something that just puts a little bit more and different pressure on the back plate where the key is mounted and that’s the worst case scenario, it’s not a big deal, something you can totally deal with. I mean you might think it’s a big deal on something that’s like four or five hundred dollars, but again these are lovingly handcrafted.

Basically, so I can. I can kind of forgive a lot here. It’S just full disclosure, not really a complaint, but something you should be aware of. If I were them, I would work on the tolerances between the Machining cutout and how the keyboard actually fits into the cutouts, because it is a kind of a tight tolerance at the top edge here. Whereas maybe you could shift the whole keyboard down a little bit or shift the keyboard cutout up a little bit same with the arrow keys home, insert and delete the stop row Keys just ends up being a little more recessed than I like for my taste, but It’S not a functional issue, it’s more more of an aesthetic issue. The actual profile of the keys is what you would expect and I don’t notice really any difference in the profile when I actually use the keyboard having used a model m keyboard daily since before I was a teenager, so I probably noticed, but this is, in my Opinion the model f style keys with the modern layout – inverted T reprogrammability, no numeric keypad. This is the Holy Grail of mechanical keyboards. This this is the best spring, the best spring technology.

You know the guy that did this had to do custom Tooling. In order to produce the wire that goes into the spring in the flapper, that’s the level of dedication that we’re dealing with here, you might say, I’m a fan, fan of that level of going deep and it works. It works for the other Model. F keyboards.

I picked up one of the original model: f keyboards, which had a simplified layout because simplifying manufacturing and everything else and that product enabled this product is kind of a second generation product. So you know they’d already mastered the f-style flappers. It’S just now that we have a modern layout with an actual function row it turns out. I do actually miss the function row a little bit more than I thought I would on the model f keyboard that I have and plus also I sort of missed the way that the keys were curved a little bit more than I thought I would so. I ended up not using that keyboard as much as I thought I might plus also I like testing all these different keyboards on the uh, the kvms, although technically they all use the same controller. So I don’t really need to do that, but hey fun times, they’ve. Actually changed the software dramatically because the first version of the software on the original model of keyboards – I had a lot of bugs happy to see that those are resolved. Basically in this setup, so good job, that’s pretty much it for the model.

F, it’s been a quick review of the new model f with the modern layout, and this is the the silver gray gray case for the model. F, I’m model this level, one I’m signing out. You can find me in the level one forums if you have any questions or you want to see any pictures or anything.

Let me know comment below hang out in the Forum ping me on Twitter. I don’t know all right. I’M signing out foreign .