Unboxing (and customizing!) a New Unicomp Model M Keyboard

greetings get a blurb for you here about this box that is bigger than my current

unicomp

camera frame in lexington kentucky and yes if you know that name and you know why this is a little bit exciting this is a big package and old that weighs nine. pounds shipped directly from them oh they got it here in like a day. I was surprised at how quickly they shipped this, so yes, in case you're off the gist, they are well known among computer

keyboard

enthusiasts, especially those who are fans of the ibm

model

m

keyboard

s and specifically the mid-mid lexmark ones. the 90s and so on, when ibm stopped making them, lexmark had the rights and a lot of things happened in terms of they're not going to make them anymore. and then some ex-ibmers and Lexmark people got together and bought all the rights and the tools and all the stuff needed to make their own IBM

model

ing keyboards without the IBM branding and that's exactly what they've been doing for the last 25 years. or so, yeah, I have a couple of different things here, so the main thing is not a keyboard that I ordered, I mean, I also ordered one because I thought why not, I wanted to try one of their things.

Yeah, initially I was just going to their website to look for parts this time and that's where I came across this. I saw that they still had some new old IBM stuff related to the IBM industrial keyboard, the industrial model M and, look, that's what it is. This is an outer casing or case of an industrial version model, which is a valuable and rare collectible keyboard today. If you're looking for the original, I don't have an original, but I have a project that requires an industrial keyboard, so I'm thinking I could take one of my lower condition m models and stick it here and tweak a few things and maybe change this to the logo black IBM and, yeah, look at that, I mean, it's just this. it's just a new old box, they had it in the warehouse, that's exactly what it is and that's exactly what I was hoping to check out, yeah, it doesn't have much of a smell at all, I guess maybe this was a later release considering It doesn't have the black IBM logo that a lot of the coolest industrialists had in the mid to late 80's, yeah, so there were some IBM based industry industrial machines that were made by IBM. then they came with industrial monolims with this darker grayish tone, it actually has a bit of a tan to it.

I've actually never seen a real IBM industrial model m in person, so either way, this will be a fun project, right? I think that's how it will be. However, it will be the other thing and I decided to order one of their classic m models because yes, here we go, this one was manufactured on August 13, 2020, it's been about two months since I recorded this, but yes, a new m model. Now I see the thing is that with these they've been using the same tools and a lot of materials and parts for so long and some of the things have changed over the years in terms of the formulation of the plastic. of little things that have changed, so it's not exactly the same, but it's a model in oh stop, it's okay, it's not uncommon for keycaps or the space bar to come off during shipping, so they're not identical to m models manufactured by IBM.

These are actually based. from the mid to late 90s, I don't know the Lexmark m models, which are still modeling proper buckling spring keyboards, you know, a lot of the same parts and everything, but these are a little lighter and have a different feel . So they told me and I have other plans for this one too. I guess since I'm making a Unicom board that isn't exactly IBM, I can customize it a bit too, so that's what I am. I'm going to do with this, okay, it immediately feels so much cheaper beyond comparison, oh man, yeah, like the plastic itself is just uh, I can feel some flex and like these edges, everything feels a bit squeaky, but to be honest, that's Totally expected, that's what I've always been reading, especially in the last few years where apparently the tools are starting to wear out a bit, so yeah, apparently the quality isn't exactly up to par. which was in previous years of

unicomp

. the newer ones have a different feel, it's not bad, but it's different, and yes, things like the writing here is maybe a little softer, not as crisp, honestly it seems fine to me overall, it's a little lighter, so supposed.

I don't have an IBM badge or anything, this whole gauge area looks different than a model. You know an original, but yeah, anything you can, you can replace and swap parts or whatever you want to do. Look, it's great to see a date. That's new This is another thing I've seen that's a little iffy on these are the little feet on the bottom here they're not great it's like plastic that's stuck there look that's a little but again they're a lot cheaper than you'd pay for a new, old IBM Model M. That's how it's the only one I have that was new and old.

You know, this kind of condition was what I got with my IBM in and I paid 500 for that, well, the whole system, but you know the keyboard alone would cost a couple hundred, potentially. I've seen some of them for less that are new and old stock, but keyboard prices fluctuate when I get to these things in general, although it feels that way. a perfectly usable keyboard for typing and stuff and I got the one with the ps2 connector on there and it's wired into it there's nothing removable I don't know what the sound is inside it's like these little pieces of plastic so anyway overall it's more Cheap to build, but that's the reason I bought it.

I just wanted to see exactly what it was, you know in terms of differences and I feel like I'm going to use this for a couple of weeks or something and like I said, I'm going to customize it. it's just a little bit in terms of some of the keys maybe put a little lgr logo or something interesting on there I don't know I don't know I don't know what exactly I want to do with it except use it see what it's like uh and yeah, even that's a little bit, it's just that the tolerances aren't exactly what they used to be in terms of the tooling, look, that's what they're using all the original stuff that they made to put it together, make it. and they're still making it new, that's hugely praiseworthy, so I'll use it for a while to see what it's like, I'll report back at some point in the future, but yeah, for now, the other thing I wanted to try was a little. part of the customization and that would be replacing some of these keycaps with other keycaps because, yes, they come off very easily.

Check out the little bending spring there and Unicomp also sells some custom colored keycaps for these. I didn't know they did it. until I got the IBM industrial keyboard cover uh there the case and then this one and then at checkout they say oh you want custom keys. I'm fine, so I have some green ones, let's look at those and there we go. See, a set of unicomp keycaps made in the exact same style as the m models they make, but only in green and yes, I'm a big fan of fidget green keycaps that only cover certain parts of a keyboard.

You may have seen the keyboard I have in the background in some of my videos. I've probably used it too, but anyway it's there plugged into one of my computers and it looks amazing, it's a more modern keyboard, a filco magisk. Touch 2 with some custom keys, I just like green and beige or a combination of white and green. I guess not only because green is the lgr type of color, but it also reminds me of old terminal keyboards and has that 70s look. like a green and a kind of amber orange, really just monochrome phosphor colors , but I thought it would look great on an m model.

I've actually never seen one with green keycaps like this, yeah look that looks pretty cool, I'll say yeah that's another one. The thing about their m models is that now they no longer have the metal brackets for some of these keys, so it's like, uh, yeah, it's using one of these little stems instead, it still feels good even without any kind of metal behind it, but yeah, no, yeah, so there's no little bracelet there, just a stem and again, honestly, I think the print looks really good, it doesn't look like I've seen some photos and some reports that they look quite blurry, it's just that I don't know, results may vary.

I guess it's awesome, as far as I know, this is going to replace all the ones that are in this darker gray, so I'm going to go ahead and pull them all out of there and yeah, these keys. In the original here you can see that actually a lot of them intersect or separate into two parts like this, so you have a cap on your cap and they kind of go together, which I guess these ones do too, but they just don't. They seem to come off well now they come off very easily. Well, I was going to say that I thought they were a little closer together, but now they still have covers, so it's nice that two-piece stuff is still happening anyway. period, let's start putting things back there, so here we go.

I really like the way it looks, it looks like they included some extra keys here in case you have one of their m models with the Windows keys there, like the context menu. I don't have them so I'm not going to use them, but yeah, that's this and one more thing I wanted to do here because you can see it has this blank space here where a company logo could go. I actually forgot to mention it before, but there's a 1996 Lexmark m model here, so I think this is exactly what it's based on. You already know the model of the m model.

You can see one had the round blue logo up there and from what I remember, some of the other ones, uh, I like it. OEM versions that they would ship to other companies like Datapath and Att or whatever. They would have their logo here and I think that's the mold they're using and another little thing is that the keypad on this one lights up. They are facing up while they are at the bottom on the model m, so this part is actually not entirely compatible with the original IBM model m, so anyway it's small things, but I want to put something in there because I have a company.

Let's do it. I made it up very, very quickly and printed in Photoshop a little bit of a layer here with masking tape to make it all shiny. I'd like to create a proper metal plate, but for now this will do. trick, get this out of here, perfect if anyone has any recommendations on where to get custom sized metal badges let me know, I know who I use to make case badges but I don't know, I haven't checked if they like metal. so I'm just going to use some acid free double sided tape here to act as a backing and the excess just rolls off there and there we're going to look at that so there we go I'm going to custom lgr unicomp model m ah yes this is awesome again the feel is slightly different just because the build materials are thinner and like the metal plate underneath maybe a little thinner but I think the plate is the same as my 96.

Here it is just the overall weight, this is heavier and feels more solid right away, so yeah, this sounds hollower, so to speak again, not bad at all. I've actually been using this for a few days off camera, because oh well. You know, edit this has been my main keyboard for a few days while I was filming these two points for this advertising video here and I haven't had any problems with it, obviously, it's just a good model, it's just not, as you know, robust. and that's it, it's not little things, just the little plastic imperfections and things like that that are noticeable, it just feels cheaper because it's a modern keyboard anyway.

Screw them in. I'm going to stick with a model m for a while or any of the others. other m models, i have a 1985, a 1987 and a 1988. i probably have a dozen m models, but i just wanted to try this one because unicop. I've always been curious about build quality and the little things people say they are. different on them, just, yeah, subtle differences between keyboard enthusiasts and thank God they stopped using that stupid ugly logo here used to have this big ugly Unicop logo. This is much better. I think they offer other faces for this that I could order. one of those and make my own or something, but it looks good anyway, that's all for this video, thank you so much for watching.

I'm going to use this keyboard now.