Sometimes all you need is a new toy. My new toy’s a really old toy, but it has the same effect as something shiny and new. Such a thing of beauty, such a satisfying experience. It’s funny because in its heyday, this was a run of the mill accessory for IBM computers, which is about as boring and mundane you can get.

Serial number and manufacturing date

This particular unit was manufactured in 1987. Ever since I heard about mechanical keyboards in 2012-13, I have wanted to have one of these in my possession. I’m glad to report that it lives up to all that hype.

The anticipation combined with the honeymoon period of using something new. The slight hiccup while setting it up. Browsing forums to find fixes to issues. Finally getting a thirty-year-old piece of electronics to work with a modern computer. It just scratches my itch for tinkering with things, making them work together. An itch I have had since the days before digitally downloadable games were the norm, and I had to buy bargain basement games due to a lack of availability where I lived. My computer was barely able to run those games, and I had to find all sorts of fixes for a multitude of issues. The satisfaction after getting a game to run for the first time, after hours and sometimes even days of troubleshooting is what the experience of getting this keyboard to work reminded me of.

How it feels to type on it

Now that the beige behemoth was up and running, I started to type. This anticipation to type is something I hadn’t felt in ages. It didn’t matter if I’m a bad writer. It didn’t matter if a genius level intellect told me I wasn’t good at it. None of that mattered. I wanted to do this again. I wanted to tear open a hole in the dark unconscious and pour the contents of the mind into the realm of the digital, through this ancient instrument. This instrument that flawlessly captures what it should feel like to put words on a screen. Just the right amount of force. Just the right level of click. Throw in the occasional ping in there. Hear those sounds, let your thoughts achieve a particular rhythm. Lose your conscious thoughts and inhibitions about your apparent skill or the lack of it. All of that is pointless. You write because you don’t want this to stop. You don’t want the clicking to stop. You want to keep typing through the slight fatigue, till the fingers start to feel the strain, your fingertips slightly hot from pushing down on the perfectly curved and textured plastic keys.

In a casual conversation with friends, I joked that this was my weapon against the transgressions of my upstairs neighbor who likes cranking up the volume when he watches TV and listens to music. It doesn’t matter to me now. I want to write. Write about something. Write about anything. My will to write was like a rock precariously perched on a cliff waiting for a little nudge to convert potential energy to kinetic. The nudge came in the form of a new keyboard. The rock is certainly rolling now. The content does not matter. This is purely self-indulgent writing. Writing for its own sake.

So familiar, yet so strange

This brings back memories of a time that I now feel was much simpler. The feeling is familiar, but the memory is distant. In some way, this keyboard feels just like that- an object from the distant past which feels so familiar as I use it today. I didn’t need to learn anything, I didn’t have to readjust. Everything was in the right place. Like going back to your parent’s house after several years to find your room just like it was before you left. That makes sense because the IBM Model M helped popularize the standard keyboard layout of the keyboards of today.

It doesn’t have the modern accouterments- no backlighting, no pass-through for headphones or USB devices, no macro keys. But the feel of the keys more than makes up for that. I’d gladly give all of those fancy features up for the visceral satisfaction this buckling spring keyboard gives me.

This keyboard was built for offices and workspaces. It was built at a time when the age of personal computing was only getting started. Back then, loud keyboards were more accepted. We’ve moved past the time when keyboards were designed to sound similar to typewriters. We live in a time where the most frequently used keyboards are virtual ones on a glass touchscreen panel. There’s haptic feedback of course, but it is nowhere close to what you can get from a keyboard with mechanical keys.

Some parting thoughts

The IBM Model M serves as a reminder of the things we’ve left behind in our relentless quest towards more affordable mass-produced computer peripherals. Mechanical keyboards are making a comeback as a niche community of late, but of the keyboards, I have tried, none come close to the IBM Model M. It’s so much more than just “good enough”.

This is, of course, my personal opinion. Not everyone likes clicky and loud keyboards, not everyone’s willing to put up with a hefty computer peripheral. But if you, like me, are filled with a strange compulsion to write, this is one of the most satisfying tools you can use.