Did you ever consider buying Das Keyboard the über cool totally black deck, with no lettering on the keys? I know I did. I know you did too. Don’t even deny it! You know that it’s cool, and you know you kinda want one. But who wants to pay for a stripped down keyboard? Hell, I’m willing to bet that most of us here at some point actually considered taking apart an old keyboard and spray-painting the shit out of it to make your own 1337 das keyboard lookalike on the cheep.
Well, the difference between us and Jon Lee is that he actually did it:
image © jonlee.ca
It’s not just any old keyboard either. He painted the infamous IBM Model-M keyboard. Some people hate that keyboard, some people think this is the best piece of hardware on earth. I don’t really care that much about it, but this makes me want to get one and paint it myself. :)
[tags]keyboard, das keyboard, model m, ibm, cool[/tags]
That would mess me up so much! I normally use a UNIX layout, which has the most used keys on a UNIX CLI if different places (tilde/back tick, control, caps lock and escape). It will be hard to break the UNIX habit since just about all computers up to the IBM 5150 had the control key in the right place. Yep, even my Apple ][ and Apple /// had it right, but later felt the pressure from the luser community to follow the home PC.
Oh well . . . I guess us dinosaurs will eventually become extinct!
Well, you could always use a unix keyboard and paint it. :P
Btw, unix keyboards always mess me up. I’d be typing along, and all of a sudden everything is in all caps cause I accidentally hit Caps Lock instead of Ctrl or Shift. :mrgreen:
Yeah, I could paint a UNIX keyboard, but I treasure the ones I can find! The only ps2 style I have found is the Happy Hacker, but they are missing other keys I use (cursor keys!). I have a few Sun USB UNIX keyboards, but like I said, I treasure them too much.
I guess I wouldn’t be cool with an old layout anyways . . .
I love the price difference on that link you posted. The blank key one costs $259 and the bigger regular version with the arrow keys costs $69. :|
Personally I like my CTRL in the bottom left corner and the Caps Lock below Tab. But I guess that’s what I’m used to. I wouldn’t be able to deal without the arrow keys either.
A few years ago, I also painted a keyboard black,, but just the upper half of the plastic casing. I also did my computer mouse.
It actually looked pretty neat, and I stil could see the keys :P
That was in my 486 days, running Windows 3.1. Ah, memories :)
Oh, come on. Painting keys is the whole point here. Nothing looks more awesome than a keyboard full of blank keys. ;)
I can think of things that look more awesome than a blank keyboard
Many of them involve cookies, naked girls or some combination of the two…
No, that’s a different kind of awesome. :P
Wait… Cookies? I would say tasty… I’m not sure if I would classify them as awesome thought.
Cookies = not awesome? You aren’t buying the right cookies :wink:
This is the dumbest thing I have ever seen. The IBM Model M is already a rare bird, but this moron here goes ahead and destroys one. Those keycaps – $100 a set from reputable dealers! And here he paints over them. Do us all a favor and just take the keycaps off of your model M if you have to ruin it. Sell them on eBay to those of us who want to preserve the original look and need replacements. Or better yet, just use your Model M without the keycaps and skip the painting step all together!
MCW, Model Ms can be gotten for $30 on ebay without much difficulty, and keycaps are nowhere near $100 a set.
The Model M13 and M15s are different, but sometimes you get lucky. (Got my M13 off of the to-be-surplussed pile at the college where I work, and my ’93 M from a closet at the same institution.