21 ms·
IBM model-M keyboard sound emulation to annoy co-workers
- lllorddino 10y ago98.6% C!
- Intermernet 10y agoI used to work for a company that had a box full of Model M keyboards that people didn't want to use. I knicked one when I left, and unfortunately It's since died. If you work for a company that bought any IBM servers in the last 20 years, there is a chance you'll find something similar (probably not actual model M's, but still damn good keyboards!) in the server room spares boxes. Speak to your friendly SysAdmin and see if you can strike a deal :-)
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoThey didn't want to use Model M's? Are they programmers? If they are, check for face masks or holoprojectors: they may be dangerous aliens. Or maybe they're just really strange.
- creshal 10y agoPfft, peasants. Just get an actual Model M.
- mteinum 10y agoWord! here is mine https://www.flickr.com/photos/mortenteinum/27280410414/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/mortenteinum/27280410414/ Not using this at work since we are in an open landscape. HHKB is a much better choice here.
- mtrycz 10y agoWhere can I get custom keycaps for it? All the caps everywhere are for modern switches.
- mteinum 10y agoUnicomp have some http://www.pckeyboard.com/page/category/Buttons http://www.pckeyboard.com/page/category/Buttons Artisans http://www.k3kc.com/?post_type=product&s=ibm http://www.k3kc.com/?post_type=product&s=ibm
- euroclydon 10y agoI worked with someone who had a Model M. I thought he was a super fast typer, until I realized the keys make a sound on the way down and the way up, making his perceived words per minute (PWPM) twice is actual WPM.
- DCRichards 10y agoI've got so much time for the dedication to just being annoying here haha. Excellent
- ourmandave 10y agoI think the annoyance factor could be amped-up a bit more if you mapped each key to a digital drum kit. High hat backspace!
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- krylon 10y agoI have a Model M at home, and while I find that the sound helps me keep my rhythm while typing, it can be really annoying in an office environment. At my last job, being unhappy with the keyboard I had, I brought the Model M to work one day (it was just gathering dust at home). While typing was much more pleasant, I quickly discovered I had to stop typing whenever my coworker's phone rang. This, in turn, quickly became annoying for me, so at the end of the day, I packed it up and took it back home. The Model M is one of the best keyboards I ever had the pleasure of using, but I would not like to inflict that level of noise to coworkers at the office. (The best keyboard I ever used, interestingly, was a Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 made by Microsoft. I am not a big fan of Microsoft, but they really know how to build a great keyboard. Unfortunately, this was the only keyboard I ever managed to spill tea on... and on its identical replacement. I took that as a hint that some higher power might not want me to use Microsoft keyboards.)
- douche 10y agoIf you are so close to your coworkers that typing on your keyboard will disrupt their phone calls, you're too close. If you have a real office, anything short of blasting Slayer won't disturb anyone else.
- Nursie 10y agoHave you ever used a Model M? With a decent amount of enthusiasm, a Model M can disrupt phonecalls being made in another room entirely. Best keyboard ever, but I also don't take mine to work any more, out of consideration for my coworkers. Also it's really big and heavy...
- bogomipz 10y agoAdd to the Model M the acoustics of a typical open office plan found at most startups and its unbearable. Its not uncommon to have a startup in a concrete loft type space with a group of people who insist on using whatever the modern $200 hipster version of a "buckling spring" keyboard is. It's "cred" man.
- tonyjstark 10y agoI use a mechanical keyboard with brown Cherry MX switches and am hated enough already. Sometimes my coworker even leaves the room. Good thing is, he's one of my best friends otherwise I probably wouldn't be allowed to use that keyboard at all. But cool project!
- jypepin 10y agoYea I used to have a cherry mx blue keyboard but that became too annoying for my coworkers and felt bad so I switched to topres
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoThe MXs are nice. Except that one that is quiet, but provides no force feedback: it's worse than a rubber dome.
- na85 10y agoShout-out to Unicomp[0], who make new USB Model M's from the original specs. I love mine and my wife hates it because it's too loud and clakkety. Their website is horrid and the fit-and-finish on the product leaves a bit to be desired, but the switches are great. [0] http://www.pckeyboard.com/ http://www.pckeyboard.com/
- hydandata 10y agoYep they make pretty decent clones. I have special edition they did on Massdrop but sadly the 70g keys are causing major pain and I have to use my other keyboard with Topre switches for doing work :(
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoThey actually aren't clones. IIRC, they took the original diagrams, plates, etc., from IBM, who wasn't using them.
- creshal 10y agoIBM outsourced keyboard production first to Lexmark, and then to Unicomp. Unicomp then later went and bought the patents and everything to spin-off their own products, still with the original tooling. You'll find a lot of "Original IBM" keyboards that were built by Unicomp in license. I have a Model M4 from 2000 that was already built by Unicomp, sold by IBM with their own branding.
- kw71 10y agoTHE PAIN! I'm such a fool. It was so terrible the first time. I wanted to cut off my hands. It went away and I got back to work. Eventually I had to stop work every hour from the pain. It can't be the keyboard! My precious PS/2 buckling spring model M! I've been using it for fifteen years without trouble! THIS IS THE BEST KEYBOARD IN THE WORLD! I am such a fool. No more model M, no more pain.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
- Nursie 10y agoSerious question in comedy thread time - Does anyone know of another keyboard that's as comfortable and all-round wonderful to use as the Model M, but quiet?
- snarfy 10y agoThere are a lot of mechanical keyboards out there with a similar heft as the Model M. The trick is the switches. I like the Cherry red switches, which are quiet. Cherry blue switches are clicky like the old model M. Comparison between the switches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp46JeDDTCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp46JeDDTCw
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoYeah, as a Model M user, I hate the Red. It has no feedback: worse than a dome keyboard.
- tracker1 10y agoI can see the appeal for gaming, but not so much for typing... imho nothing works as smoothly as a model m as long as you aren't bottoming out, you can actually type pretty lightly, relatively speaking...
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoI don't even see the appeal for gaming: Maybe at insane skill levels, but even on a Model M, the keypress time is a fraction of your response time, maybe ~10ms at worst. Although I haven't counted.
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoThat doesn't seem possible. A good part of the MM's ergonomics are the force feedback, and the physical click as the spring buckles. You really can't get anything like that without a click of some kind. I've seen those quiet Cherry MX switches: they just go all the way down, no force feedback at all. Honestly, I'd say they're worse than dome keyboards.
- piyush_soni 10y agoIs it working for anyone with Windows 10? I installed OpenAL, and then ran buckle.exe - it silently crashes every time I start typing.
- to3m 10y agoI had the same problem too. I'm using Windows 10 with the anniversary update. (I'm not sure its use of a global hook stored in an EXE is safe anyway. I think you have to have these things in DLLs, because the hook runs in each process's context, so each process needs its own copy of the code. Obviously it must work for at least some people though... I wonder how? Will have to try building it when I get a moment.)
- piyush_soni 10y agoNot sure. I tried with Windows 7 compatibility mode as well, but no use.
- to3m 10y agoThe keyboard hook thing is safe - turns out the low-level keyboard hook is special, and it runs in the installing thread's context. Having nothing better to do this evening I wrote my own version, which should run fine on Windows 10: https://github.com/tom-seddon/GfyKeys https://github.com/tom-seddon/GfyKeys It's very possible this isn't quite the same as the original, which I've still yet to actually experience - however you do get a click each time you press and release a key, so it's presumably not a million miles off.
- to3m 10y agoJust noticed it does 3d sound positioning... hmmmm... I wonder if that makes a noticeable difference?
- chestervonwinch 10y agoHere's what it sounds like, for those who don't know: https://youtu.be/ujd6l_9TUmU https://youtu.be/ujd6l_9TUmU
- kalleboo 10y agoI have a coworker who uses a mechanical keyboard. It really ruins Skype meetings. I may use this to counter her.
- oneeyedpigeon 10y agoI fear you're missing out on a large chunk of the lucrative hipster market by not supporting OSX. Any chance?
- jordigh 10y agoSeeing how it's cross-compiled into Windows, I reckon the reason it's not made for macOS yet is that there is no way to cross-compile into that OS yet. We have similar difficulties in building Octave for macOS. This is really frustrating. Because Windows is so foreign, free hackers worked hard to make it palatable and created mingw32, which allows wonderful things such as being able to build for Windows without having Windows. Because macOS is "Unix" and, look! it has a few scraps of "open source" in it, nobody ever felt the need to reimplement its API for free hackers and thus allow cross-compiling. And no, homebrew is not the answer. People seem unaware that there's much more to Unix than a passing familiarity in the CLI. The different audio and graphics and lack of X, and many other differences in macOS make it a very foreign OS for free development. Porting Octave to macOS has been a tremendous effort of many years that has never really yielded completely satisfactory results.
- pjmlp 10y agoPeople keep forgetting that the standard UNIX interfaces are only good for CLI, server and daemon applications. Anything else isn't easier just because a system is UNIX. The same porting issues would arise when porting to anything else that isn't GNU/Linux.
- jordigh 10y agoWell, porting to Windows is actually easy thanks to mingw32 and MXE. At least easier than macOS. It's also far easier to get Octave on the BSDs. So frustrating that macOS is the most difficult target.
- pjmlp 10y agoI had lots of fun porting software between Aix, HP-UX, Solaris, GNU/Linux and Windows NT/2000 back the late 90's up to until 2003. That is where I learned what actually means "portable" UNIX software, specially if it needs resources like audio, external hardware or GUIs.
- anton_gogolev 10y agoTwo devs from my current company got themselves Razer keyboards, which look very much like Model M keyboard, albeit it's all-black. If it were not for video surveillance, I would've already covered them in construction-foamed them shut. They are obnoxiously loud.
- jordigh 10y agoI use a Das Keyboard, which I think is probably similar. I actually felt bad for a while and asked all of my coworkers if it was too loud and I should use a different keyboard. They all insisted that the noise doesn't bother them. Now I just type with abandon. It's a lovely keyboard. It feels like silk under my fingers. Lovely, clicky, noisy silk. It was actually left in the company by a former employee, and I nabbed it at once.
- anton_gogolev 10y agoOh, this too. Noisy as hell. Or am I overly sensitive to sudden bursts of clickety-clack? Personally, I use Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop[0]. Very comfortable, silent, ergonomic and all that. [0]: https://www.microsoft.com/accessories/ru-ru/products/keyboards/sculpt-ergonomic-desktop/l5v-00017 https://www.microsoft.com/accessories/ru-ru/products/keyboar...
- cwilkes 10y agoUsually if you have to ask "is this too X?" It is and you know it internally. They are being socially polite. See if their productivity dropped, they are out of the office more, they exclude you from events, or if they quit.
- jordigh 10y agoI don't see them doing any of those things. Also, I just realised my keyboard isn't quite as noisy as a model M. I don't think it has quite the same spring mechanism. It's clicky, but apparently tolerable.
- mcguire 10y ago
- rbanffy 10y agoIt's work-in-progress, but you can also emulate an IBM Selectric. Much classier and much, much more annoying. https://github.com/rbanffy/selectric-mode https://github.com/rbanffy/selectric-mode
- mcguire 10y agoI noticed this in the Spacemacs config and have it set up for occasional use. Makes writing documentation feel more important.
- zelos 10y agoYeah, I think I'd move companies if I had to sit next to this noise all day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXJzmky2DaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXJzmky2DaI
- duncan_bayne 10y agoI don't need an emulator :) I still think my buckling spring Unicomp (basically a Model M) is the best keyboard I've ever used since the IBM unit that came with my original PC: https://www.flickr.com/photos/duncanbayne/12295182336 https://www.flickr.com/photos/duncanbayne/12295182336
- StavrosK 10y agoAlas, I can't seem to build this. It doesn't find the OpenAL libraries in Ubuntu, even though I installed them: /tmp/bucklespring/main.c:255: undefined reference to `alSourcePlay' /tmp/bucklespring/main.c:256: undefined reference to `alGetError' etc.
- SEMW 10y agoTry now! Looks like the fix for that was merged nine minutes ago :D
- Daviey 10y agoGah, i was just about to raise a pull request for this.
- StavrosK 10y agoThis is fantastic, and I'm sure that, for every new fan, five more people want to kill you.
- SEMW 10y agoTo be clear, the project isn't mine - the author looks to be https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=zevv https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=zevv
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoA lot of the new clicky keyboards are sold at incredibly high premiums, usually as gaming keyboards, or as specialty items - see Das, HH, etc. These are ripoffs. You can get a Model M from Unicomp for between $80 and $100, which is significantly cheaper, and feels way better than most of the MX keys.
- sean-duffy 10y agoFeeling better than the MX keys is definitely a matter of opinion. And many good mechanical keyboards can be had for not much higher than that price, the ones you pointed out are just a few overpriced brands.
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoWell, yes. Not ALL the keyboards are ridiculously overpriced, just many of the common brands.
- manyxcxi 10y agoI have a Das Keyboard Model S for Mac that I got for $125. Yes, that's at least 25% more expansive than your example, but as a well paid engineer it's still in the same ballpark an, it's made for Mac which you don't find in the real Model Ms. I also happened to really like the look of the Model S vs a lot of other keyboards. While I've scoffed at some that are well over $200, there are certainly more modern conveniences that come with these more expensive ones: - You (often) can choose the type of switch in the keyboard - Media/macro keys - USB hub/ports - Backlit (if you like that kind of thing) If you know what you're getting for the price, it's not a ripoff, a price premium, sure. I've had my Das for, I think, 6 years now and it's been flawless. If they're all constructed as well as the Model M and enjoy nearly the same lifespans the price difference is effectively not even a factor in my decision.
- qwertyuiop924 10y agoThat's fair enough, but the ones that are closer to $200 are crazy. As for the rest of what you mentioned, the hub's nice, but macros are what the function keys are for, and I never really got the point of backlighting. But that's just a personal preference. As for the switches, I haven't tried all the MX switches, but I really like the Model M feel, and the quiet MXs provide no feedback... yuck.
- jlgaddis 10y agoI still have my old Model M. Unfortunately, I was banned from using it in the house (by the girlfriend), but it is now connected to a FreeBSD box (which still has PS/2 connectors) in the garage. One does not realize how truly annoying the sound is until one sits in a room and has to listen to someone typing on it with reckless abandon. That's how she convinced me to stop using it.
- tracker1 10y agoMay want to look at some cherry mx brown or blue keyboards... I like brown better, imho closer to m in terms of feel... that said I haven't tried one with mx-clear.
- yitchelle 10y agoCould it be as annoying as typing on a "real" keyboard? http://www.usbtypewriter.com http://www.usbtypewriter.com
- moron4hire 10y agoI know Jack Zylkin personally and was there at Hive76 when he made the first USB Typewriter. It was a joke that took on a life of its own and ended up playing its own joke on its master. He made the first one for a contest on Instructables.com, intending to sell a kit version for anyone to make anything into a keyboard. He got so many calls and emails asking for pre-made typewriters that he basically had a business drop in his lap. I know they originally started out around $250, fully assembled, but last I checked he had bumped up the price to at least $700 just to try to curb demand (building the first or second is fun, definitely not the 15th or 30th) It somewhat unintuitively had the opposite effect as he started showing up in a number of luxury goods blogs. They are quite labor intensive to build. He was never able to find someone with both the manual dexterity, electronics knowledge, and willingness to scrape by on a pittance to be able to live an independent life to bring on as help.
- mcguire 10y agoThey're running $1300 now.
- moron4hire 10y agoI know it seems kind of crazy for this thing to cost as much as a nice computer, but you have to understand: the guy was killing himself building these things for people. When he first started doing this, I argued with him for so long about raising his prices. He was getting super depressed about working on these typewriters all the time. He thought raising the price was selfish. He just couldn't see that he needed to do it just to protect himself. He sells the kits at a much more reasonable price. But if you want him to build you one, you definitely pay a premium.
- tracker1 10y ago
- fluffysquirrel 10y agoThat cracks me up. Back in the 80s, I wrote a little TSR for a guy who missed the Atari 800 keyboard click tone on his new clone PC. I had wired a switch in line with the speaker in my Atari so that I could turn off the tone and not wake my roommate. The Atari 800 also had some fun event sounds it made whenever it read or wrote a floppy disk sector or had an I/O error. People got used to those audible feedbacks, just like the physical drive crunching noises and other "side-channel" outputs.
- VLM 10y agoWe live in a weird world where insane prison overcrowding like conditions and total lack of privacy exists in some dysfunctional workplaces, but its only culturally acceptable to complain about the quiet little keyboards. Sure if my stomach rumbles, we're so tightly packed that I just cost the company $500 by throwing ten developers out of "flow" for an hour and thats OK, but oh god no not a keyboard that clicks. At home I think my model M is pretty quiet and its certainly not disruptive but my entire family is not required so spend ten hours per day within an arms reach of me as though we're on a small rowboat together. Also textile floors and textile drapes and my office has acoustic foam ceiling tiles makes an extremely quiet environment whereas a hipster office of steel glass and concrete might reflect and echo all sounds.
- johnward 10y agoI don't think I've ever heard a Model M to compare but if I my uses the DasKey (blue switches I think) while I'm working it can get to me after a bit. Oh I did use a Model M in elementary school a couple times. edit: they include the sound of the switches here. I don't hear a difference between blue and brown though http://www.daskeyboard.com/switches/ http://www.daskeyboard.com/switches/
- groovy2shoes 10y agoI've got a cmStorm with green switches as well as a Model-M. The green switches make the same sound as the blue switches, and all I can really say is that the sound of the buckling-spring switches is very distinctive. Where the Cherry MX switches give you an alto, medium-volume "click!" sound, the buckling-springs give more of a loud, tenor "clack!" sound. While I do very much like my cmStorm for many tasks, when it comes down to just typing (writing documents, writing code, etc.), I very much prefer both the feel and the sound of the Model-M. The solid steel plate backing makes it into a suitable weapon, too -- I could probably cudgel an intruder to death with it and the thing would still work for another 30 years. Nice and heavy, it won't slide around or anything even during intense sessions. Another thing that's great about the Model-M is that the keys actuate at precisely the moment the spring buckles and you hear the "clack!". This means that the keys need to fully reset before they will actuate again. I've noticed on my cmStorm that the Cherry MX switches click just a tad before the keys actually activate. As a side-effect, with some practice, you can actuate a key multiple times without letting it reset, and thus bypassing the click and a good amount of initiation energy. In terms of feel, the Model-M has a bit more travel, and perhaps a tiny bit less resistance than the green switches (but still far more than blue switches). Added bonus: the Model-M's circuitry is completely sealed within a membrane, while the actuators are sealed within the plastic housing, and it's got drainage built-in. Like, it has some shallow little canals between the keys, complete with drain holes on the bottom. Did you spill coffee on your Model-M? Whoops! No big deal. Maybe rinse it off with some water and wipe up your desk. No harm done! Unicomp, the current holders of the buckling-spring patents and the Model-M IP, sell PS/2 and USB variants of the classic Model-M (though rebranded). They're even manufactured on the same equipment. Furthermore, they run considerably cheaper than most of the Cherry MX boards I've seen. Mine was, I think, $90 USD including shipping, compared to $130 for my cmStorm. And, yeah, despite the fact I got it in different colors than the original Model-M, it feels just the same as my Model-M. 10/10, would buy Unicomp again. One potential drawback to the Model-M, though, is because of its matrix activation, only 2 or 3 keys will register at one time when multiple keys are held. This is true even for the USB model, because the connector is not the limiting factor, but rather the way all the keys are wired. For typical typing tasks, this is not a problem, but if you're a gamer you may want to consider sticking with the Cherries. Another potential drawback is its size. The thing is huge compared to modern keyboards. To compensate, it's got a handy "pencil tray" up top. Anyway, hope this helps!
- noisy_boy 10y agoI thought of trying this to use the ridiculous CSI/hacker beep sound at each keypress. Replaced the .wav files with a short beep sound I had once downloaded and works fine (couldn't stand it after a minute). If anyone mad enough to try it, the .zip containing the properly named .wav files is here[1]. Edit: Sorry I'm new to sharing .zip files - uploaded to another site - link updated. [1]: https://filetea.me/t1sNqOwXEOAR2xkCjNF9hbptQ https://filetea.me/t1sNqOwXEOAR2xkCjNF9hbptQ
- JosephRedfern 10y agoSeems to be a broken link - any chance of a re-upload?
- ajdlinux 10y agoI work for IBM and found a couple of rather old and somewhat broken Model Ms with RJ45 connectors (!) lying around in our hardware lab. Anyone know whether adaptors for RJ45 keyboards are a thing?
- mteinum 10y agoYou can get a SDL to USB cable on ebay http://www.ebay.com/itm/SDL-to-USB-SOARERS-CONVERTER-Clicky-Keyboard-Cable-6ft-IBM-Lexmark-Model-M-/271816109375 http://www.ebay.com/itm/SDL-to-USB-SOARERS-CONVERTER-Clicky-...
- TurboHaskal 10y agoI had many mechanical keyboards. Blue, brown and red cherry switches, topre, you name it. I got rid of most of them and I regret having spent the dollar on such a meme piece of equipment. Elitism and fetichism aside, the sound and key travel is just a matter of preference and at the end of the day they won't make you type faster or help with RSI (the ones with high required actuation force can actually worsen it). I wouldn't trade my current Microsoft Sculpt for any of my previous keyboards. Both my colleagues and my wrists are glad I switched. My recommendation is that if you are going to pay a premium for a keyboard, at least focus on ergonomic features rather than gimmicks.
- mrweasel 10y ago>I wouldn't trade my current Microsoft Sculpt for any of my previous keyboards. That is a fantastic keyboard. I was starting to have wrist pains and got the Sculpt. The pain went away within days. I would like it to have the angle between the two sides be a bit larger, so that my wrists would be completely straight. On the other hand I'm sure Microsoft have a good reason for it being at the angle it's at. It's a very pleasant keyboard.
- distances 10y agoThanks for the recommendation. I love my Topre keyboard (the typing ergonomics are better than with the cheap keyboards I had before), but then again I have never before even heard of Sculpt. I'll try to keep this one in mind.
- falcolas 10y ago> at least focus on ergonomic features rather than gimmicks FWIW, mechanical switches have helped with my own finger/wrist pain significantly, for one major reason: I don't have to bottom out the keys to make them register. The lack of a sudden stop reduces the stress put on my fingers by a significant amount over 8 hours. I can't make it through 8 hours typing on a mac chicklet keyboard, but I can with any of my mechanical keyboards (red, brown, topre, etc). The durability of a mechanical keyboard also helps make up their up-front cost - where a rubber dome keyboard tends to only last me 6-8 months, I've yet to replace a mechanical keyboard due to key failure. I also wouldn't underestimate the value of "personal preference" for something you use for well over 40 hours a week.
- davidgerard 10y agoI am using this right now on my laptop. It's perfect.
- ElijahLynn 10y agoVery cool but the latency is too slow to make this go along with my normal keyboard sounds.
- foxyv 10y agoStodgy Company Policy ---------------------- Let's see here. Let's make our workplace into more of a "Startup." Modern office environment with no privacy. Check! Loud noisy stuff and people in cramped conditions. Check! "Agile" methodologies to heap requirements on Devs the night before they deploy. DOUBLE Check! After hours work required? Oh you betcha! Telecommuting as often as you like? Oh hecks naw we don't trust you shifty eyed developers. Ability to work on side projects for short time. NOPE! Only approved projects thank you. Good equipment that isn't bogged down my corporate spyware. Now you're kidding me! Listen to input on prioritizing projects. What do developers know about project planning bah!