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Comment by na85 | Hacker News Reader

Shout-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/

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Yep 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 :(

They actually aren't clones. IIRC, they took the original diagrams, plates, etc., from IBM, who wasn't using them.

IBM 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.

THE 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.

I have no idea what the pain is, as you haven't specified, but I'm glad you don't have it.

That's funny, my own carpel tunnel symptoms improved a lot about 6 years ago when I switched to a unicomp keyboard.

They actually use the original IBM tooling, I think. They bought it in the 90's. Around the same time they designed their website.

They just recently re-designed their website, its rather swollen now.

I have trouble with warm restarts losing the USB controller on which that keyboard is connected. No other keyboard causes this problem, and it is definitely the entire controller. Scary to imagine what they could be doing in that driver.

I use a unicomp keyboard, and I have the same problem. I think the problem is that it draws quite a lot more current than other USB peripherals. I have mine plugged into a powered USB hub, which seems to help.

It definitely pushes the envelope on power, if it's connected to a port that doesn't deliver, it won't work right... much more than typical membrane keyboards. They also have issues with some KVM switches that don't provide enough power. Wound up using a split power cable (like one that's usually for extra power to USB external drives, so I could push extra power into the USB interface.

Love the keyboards though... despite some QC issues.

I bought the PS/2 version. Don't have this problem.

I've never had that happen...

Not only are their keyboards great, their support is superlative too. I'd have bought more, only the unit I bought six years ago is still going strong :)

I replaced mine when I discovered the 103-key layout keyboards... gave the old one(s) to friends.

Also, auto-hot-key script so that Win+[,],\ is volume-down,up,mute respectively.

I do a similar thing for media control, but I'm running StumpWM so bindings are even easier to set up.

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