deskthority

So, I was looking through old IBM announcement letters, when I found this. In IBM's parlance of the early 1980s, "low profile keyboard" meant Model F, consequently I was like -



So I made the long and perilous journey across the internets to find people who know more about IBM keyboards than I do, whereupon I was provided with these pictures -





Asides from the German layout Ambra keyboards, they're the only all-white buckling spring keyboards I have seen. In some ways, it looks like a streched out AT (although it predates the AT keyboard by about two years) with the terminal style feet instead of the feet you see on the XT and AT with the knobs at the side. There's a pretty noticeable gap between the keys and the case that you can see in the last picture, not entirely sure what the cause of that is.

I like how they call it an ergonomic keyboard.

The red button is begging me to press it.

daedalus wrote:There's a pretty noticeable gap between the keys and the case that you can see in the last picture, not entirely sure what the cause of that is.

My model F AT keyboard has a similar gap, so I don't find it odd.

webwit wrote:I like how they call it an ergonomic keyboard.

Well, compared with



I bet that woman is sitting on a tropical island somewhere, living off the litigation settlement from IBM from when her hands fell off after that picture was taken.

Damn, back in the days they got toasters with their computers!

daedalus wrote:Asides from the German layout Ambra keyboards, they're the only all-white buckling spring keyboards I have seen.

They don't look "all white" to me. The darker keys are only slightly darker than the others, like on a Sun Type 5.

I think that's just dirt :p

Wow, you could park a bike in those drives.

Silly noob question perhaps, but what's the down arrow, located where caps lock tends to be?

My guess is Shift Lock, i.e. the same thing.

Here's a Displaywriter ad that features the 'tall' keyboard:

I worked in a lot of IBM shops on System/36s in the 80s, that looks a lot like an old 5250 terminal except that they didn't have 8" floppy drives, of course. Those were in the system unit, which was about the size of a washer and dryer set.

The real question is, did they have the babes? I love those IBM babes.

My office had "Helen."

No, she was most assuredly NOT an IBM babe.

nathanscribe wrote:Wow, you could park a bike in those drives.

Silly noob question perhaps, but what's the down arrow, located where caps lock tends to be?

On German keyboards, the downward arrow represents a lock.

Beam Spring keyboards would have had Lock keys that locked into place.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

The IBM twins.