BTW an old dream of mine is finding an IBM "M" keyboard with the trackpoint (know as "clitoris" in Brazil...go figure! :oD). I'd love to buy one, any info? :oD

Gene Buckle wrote: I don't know about other models, but the keycaps on the 104-key Unicomp customizer not only come off, but are interchangeable with a real Model M. Doc

On Wednesday 20 August 2008 13:36, Gene Buckle wrote: Speaking of key tops, most of what I've seen out there is one bit of plastic keycap, but this IBM I'm typing on seems to have a two-part approach to things. I know this because the "-" key on the numeric pad is missing the upper portion, the one with the "-" on it, so what's there is both a " " key and also smaller than all the rest of them. Anybody got a spare "-" handy? -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

On Wednesday 20 August 2008 16:35, Jules Richardson wrote: Impressive! I ain't feeling that ambitious lately, though... I have two of these, and the noise was a bit irritating at times, particularly considering how this machine's in the bedroom, but we've gotten used to it and I wouldn't part with this and go back to cheap clone keyboards at all, as long as I have a choice in the matter. -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin

I had a look, and I'm afraid not. However, I can offer you any of the following: just e-mail me your postal address off-list. "-" with a shift of "=", off-white Totally blank, grey "Field -", grey. These interchangeable keykaps were used on a lot of IBM keyboards in the late '80s. On the PC, I think they came in with the enhanced AT keybaord; my PS/2 keyboards have them; and I think some 319x terminals had them. The nice feature was that you could do make international keyboards with fewer parts, since the keycaps were all mechanically identical; they didn't change shape with the rake of the keyboard the way the underlying keys did. Many years ago I picked up a keybaord at a car boot sale. It belonged to a terminal of some description. It sat around my computer room getting tripped over and falling off things until it was so badly damaged I didn't think it worth keeping. But I kept the keycaps, several keys and a few spring/flappy bit subassemblies. Philip.

Alexandre Souza wrote: Ouch! I prefer "nubbin" myself. I use one at home and at work, and the ability to switch between the nubbin and a trackball prevents my RSI/carpal tunnel. When I'm getting tired/hurt with one method, I switch to the other and keep on trucking. The model in particular is the M13 and ebay's prices for used ones are just about equal to the price of a new one (including buckling spring keys) from Unicomp, so I'd just give them your business. -- Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/ Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/ Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/ A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/

On Wed, 20 Aug 2008, Alexandre Souza wrote: It was also apparently called that VERY UNOFFICIALLY during development.

When someone sees this thing, cannot think in a different thing :o)

I would be impressed if there were in fact a keyboard codenamed G-Spot. -- ----------------------------------- personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored. -- George Saunders' dying words -

That would be a great product tie-in. Of course, that guarantees we'll never actually see it. -- ------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ -- Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com -- Life is like a simile. -----------------------------------------------------

That would be some kind of weird cross between a speculum and a bore scope... g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind.

Alexandre Souza wrote: Love those... I got spoilt on those on the past two jobs where I had a Thinkpad. I find it's a lot nicer to use the {trackpoint|clitoris|nipple} pointer than a mouse, trackpad, or trackball - your hands never leave the keyboard to use them like with a mouse. It's always annoying to have to lift my hand off the keyboard just to point at something. :-) Although I love my MacBook Pro, I had a hell of a time adjusting from two years of ThinkPad keyboard to it. I still hate the trackpad so I've gone back to "Kensington Expert Mouse" trackballs... I still have the MouseTrack ones for my Sun machines... Those little accupoint guys are really analog joystics. I replaced a dead one on a SPARCBook by sacrificing a junk Thinkpad keyboard. http://www.sunder.net/SPARCbook has all the gory details. :-) They're fun little beasts. I had plans to replace another dead with an analog joystick from a junk Playstation 1 controller, but never did it... trouble was where to place it on the SPARCBook?... It's better to replace them with the thinkpad versions since they're the same thing, though the connectors are completely different and you have to work with those annoying flex ribbon cables. (I suppose if you wanted to you could replace the analog joysticks on Playstation controllers with a pair of nipples, but they'd probably be slower to use than the original ones - the problem is that the resistances are different, so you have to add other resistors to adjust them.)

Jules> I don't think I've ever met anyone who likes a trackpad after Jules> using one of the mouse nipples. I'm also surprised that it's a Jules> significant price difference between nipple and Jules> trackpad. Anyone know why laptop manufacturers insist on Jules> giving people trackpads, rather than a better (and more Jules> compact) mouse-a-like? Because your guess is mistaken. There certainly are people (I'm one of them) who have use the "eraser head" thing in the past and refuse ever to use it again in the future. Whenever IT has set up a PC for me, I have always laid down a requirement that it must *not* have an eraserhead mouse control (or if it has one, it must also have a trackpad *and* it must have a way to disable the eraserhead). Fortunately, with the exception of several generations of IBM machines for the first few years after IBM invented that thing, avoiding it has always been possible. UI choices are very much a personal preference thing. Keyboards are another -- some people really like the warped keyboards (like the "Natural" keyboard); others won't have anything to do with them. paul

Jim> Paul Koning wrote: Jim> Just out of curiosity, was your first one an IBM model or some Jim> other model? I ask because the IBM ones have always had Jim> consistent performance from model to model, whereas the ones I Jim> saw on Toshiba machines 7+ years ago were TERRIBLE to use (very Jim> mushy, non-linear response, etc.). Jim> My guess is that, if you truly hate it, you might not have Jim> started on a true IBM one. I think the first one may have been on a NEC PC, but I've used the IBM ones, too. There may be gradations of horribleness, but the basic conclusion remains the same. On the other hand, it's clear that a fair percentage of people like the things. That's why there is a choice. Choice is good... Some PCs even come with both (my current Dell PC, for example). One option I haven't seen in many years: my first laptop (NEC) had a trackball mounted in the front edge of the case. Very easy to operate with your thumb while the rest of the hand is on the keyboard. But after that one model I haven't seen it since. paul

On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 10:15 AM, der Mouse <mouse at rodents-montreal.org> wrote: Yeah, I'd rather use a real mouse over either, but I'd have to go for the trackpad. The nub is just too small to be properly responsive, I guess. That and I always end up thumbing a key when I'm trying to use it. Trackpad has its own problems, of course. Surprised no one has mentioned the third built-in pointer variant of the Model M - the one with the tiny trackball in the upper right corner. I've got one somewhere. It's pretty useless, too.

On 21/08/2008 14:52, Jules Richardson wrote: Actually, you have :-) However, I hate them both! -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York

Jim Leonard wrote: Me too. Plus in usage no matter how much I play with the settings I can't ever seem to get them to a point where they don't register a movement as a mouse click every once in a while. cheers Jules

Not to hijack or otherwise cause topic drift, but if anyone ever wants to attach an old keyboard to the PC and the KB can be addressed as 1 to 8 rows by 1 to 16 columns, email me. Although C=Key is currently designed to work with CBM keyboards, the HW doesn't care, and the SW only needs minor updates to work with other KB matrices. Jim