Basically the only thing interesting about the ConcertMaster is that Carmack used it (and that it looks somewhat cool). As for the keyboard itself, it is just a basic OEM membrane keyboard and that good one even. The speakers are lets say adequate for the time and size.
Interestingly, the speaker part and the keyboard part are completely separate. The "cable" consists of four separate cables (keyboard, power, line out, mic in) in a thin sleeve. Mine was supplied with AT plug on the keyboard cable and Y-adapter that converted PS2 into AT DIN and barell jack for the speaker power. The keyboard label indeed says it is powered by 9V DC, but I guess that never really happened as PS/2 is 5V no matter what various devices say.
Edit: And as for the supper hard to find nowadays part: I suspect that part of the reason is that the keyboard module inside the thing is ridiculously sensitive to even minor spills.
Well, as a bog-standard person, I use Logitech MX Keys 2.
It's good enough for writing long sessions and reliable enough to type on without much thinking.
It has great features though. Automatic backlight and standby via hall sensor, great key texture and weight, scissor switches instead of bog-standard membrane, etc.
It's not a mechanical keyboard and not smooth as one, but it's not an enemy of fingers and hands.
Logitech's bolt receiver is great though. Encrypted, low latency and has native Linux support via Solaar.
I have 3 mechanical keyboards, but one is too big, others are not in my native layout and miss a couple of keys which I need for certain characters, so they are delegated to long coding sessions at home.
When you didn't learn to type properly, relearning to type can be a very difficult task; re-learning on a split keyboard is particularly unforgiving. Around three weeks into re-learning I was convinced I would never learn properly and that I'd wasted a lot of time and money (I was freelancing at the time) on something that wouldn't help me eat, never mind sleep.
Two weeks later I was back up to normal typing speeds, a month after that I was faster than ever. Two months or so after that, my back pain was gone.
Of course, my back pain was caused by sitting lopsided - something an overdominant hand on a standard keyboard pushes you towards. No amount of exercise and posture correction was solving it - but when the true cause was resolved it cleared up (with exercise) very quickly.
Countervailing story: the Ergodox (EZ specifically but that's less important) gave me permanent RSI in my thumbs, because it was too big for my hands, and to this day I pretty much can't use a keyboard layout that relies on lots of thumb involvement. Even just hitting the spacebar throughout the day or using my thumbs to type on a smartphone is enough to flare it up, almost a decade after I stopped using that keyboard.
YMMV, ergonomics are highly personal with respect to your body size and proportions. We didn't have the proliferation of keyboard layouts then that we do now. Perhaps if the Iris or Corne had existed then, I would still be using my thumbs for modifier keys in a 40% layout. I never got the hang of tapdance or hold modifiers.
The Atreus layout is the only one I can still use somewhat, because the thumbs are held closer to the hand rather than splayed out.
That Model M SSK looks real nice. I have not one but two Filco Majestouch 2 TKL with brown MX keys, one for 12 years and counting. They are so much heavier, nicer compared to what I got recently second hand: a WASD with a very wobbly case.
Oh you mean… OK. The one on my 2008 unibody MacBook, which I likely put the most hours in on of any of them. Then the one on my ancient and lovely Thinkpad T240 — one of the most pragmatically delightful computers ever — and probably the N33SX I owned in 1992.
The keyboard on the M1 Max MBP is quite nice, too.
Get a Zynthian and dive right in to all the FM synthesis you can possibly imagine, and more. Its pretty freakin' powerful. Plus, you can do all kinds of mad things with it, vis a vis oddball controllers and such.
My Kinesis Freestyle 2 will always be the greatest ergo keyboard I've ever owned - with cables. I can tilt at 5, 10, 15 degree angles. I can move the two parts differently (and do), and with the risers, I can tilt it 90 degrees - which I'm never doing. The flexibility is perfect for me, so I keep one at home, and one in the office.
Kinesis Freestyle Gaming for me. The "traditional" Freestye has a wrist pad that's made out of a material so horrible I returned the keyboard immediately. Yuck. This was years ago, maybe newer models are better? But I'm very happy with the Freestyle Gaming in general.
IMHO the persistence of Model M (now Unicomp) worship is a meme. Yes a chunky Buckling Spring mechanism is a very unique and "fun" feel, but that doesn't mean it's actually good to do a lot of typing on in terms of ergonomics or speed. So what of it? It's a novelty item, not the ultimate keyboard.
The Ergodox was also too unstable with high tilting for me, so I search for other options. I found the Dygma Raise. Been using it for 3 years now, it is a blessing. I will buy a Raise 2 wireless for my work desk in the office too now.
I cannot fathom all my collegues who still use non ergo keyboards and mice...
After a decade of exploring various mechanical keyboards (a few form factors, but mostly exploring the switches), I settled on a Topre Realforce around 2016 and fell in love. I later learned of the Topre silent switches (often branded as "Type-S"), and have used those ever since over many few boards: a HHKB, a Leopold FC660C with a PCB swap for programmable layers, various revisions of the Realforce.
I used a friend's ErgoDox a few years ago, and quite liked it, but what holds me back is the Topre switches. If only it was feasible to acquire individual Topre switches and put them onto a custom PCB...
Here's hoping someone on HN will swoop in and tell me "It's totally possible! Just _____!"
Some enthusiasts have made custom PCBs for Topre and Niz switches, even columnar ergo. I've not seen the ErgoDox layout specifically, and I dunno how to source individual switches though.
There is also the XVX Whisper switch, with has a Topre-like mechanism for Hall Effect keyboards: with a magnet under the dome. You could buy pack of switches but reviews say it is mushier than Topre.
I find it strange that people who start caring about ergonomics settle for Ergodox, Moonlander and other halfway there solutions when Kinesis, Glove80, Maltron who have put in real ergonomic research exist..
I’m one of those people. I loved Ergodox, switched to Moonlander but didn’t like it, tried out Voyager and stuck with it.
Voyager is not even a very ergonomic keyboard, but it’s good enough for me, I configured it so that it’s very convenient for me to use, I added some accessories to for better tilt, I’m good - my wrists don’t hurt anymore, and that was my goal
I have a Moonlander but I could never get used to it, even when remapping some keys so that tab is where my muscle memory expects it to be. But maybe trying to use it for both windows (play) and macos (work) was a problem. I should give it another go. Of course another issue may be that I'm very much a mouse-and-keyboard person instead of a keyboard wizard.
I should get an alternative to my old compact / flat apple keyboard one day though. It's been going strong for nearly a decade.
Going to such a different form factor feels enough like relearning to type that I found it also to be a good time to learn a better layout than qwerty.
I really didn't enjoy the cheap plastic construction of the Moonlander. I had two of them for home and work. I even modded a mousepad onto the wristrests to make it more comftable.
But in the end the housing being out of plastic, it creaked, wobbled and just was not satisfying to type on.
I came from premium mechnical keyboards with solid steel or aluminum construction.
I ended up with the Neo Ergo, a middle ground. Not as ergonomic, but solid feel, no plastic and great looks too.
I learnt to type on an Acorn Archimedes 3000 which had Ctrl to the left of A. I was so happy to find HHKBs in the late 00s had the same feature and have been using once since. I wouldn't mind never having a CapsLock again.
But you don't need your physical keyboard to do that. Couldn't you have brought any keyboard that you liked and remapped the Caps Lock key to Ctrl? I have it remapped to Backspace in all of my keyboards
As someone who's tried several keyboards, a key feature I've found myself unable to go without is contouring of the keyboard. Keyboards like Kinesis Advantage 2, Kinesis Advantage 360 and the Glove 80 essentially. I've personally found it the biggest gain to reducing strain on my left hand.
I have a moonlander and love it for typing. My issue is that I use my mouse a bunch as well, and find it awkward to switch my right hand to the ouse and back again. Does the touchpad work better for this?
Any QWERTY or QWERTY-inspired keyboard (layout) is silly.
Switching to orto without solving a real bottleneck is like changing Opel to Porshe but keep using a set of square wheels. Of course the car will run better, but...
My experience switching layout is poor. I touch typed Qwerty at around 75 WPM. I switched to Colemak, and after a month or so of Monkeytype I am back at around 75 WPM but didn't gain significant speed. I never had serious wrist pain, so I can't say Colemak helped with that.
After sharing this with some people, it turns out that a lot of speed gains, and maybe wrist pain improvement, comes from people that switch from Qwerty + peeking (and sometimes avoiding pinky) to Other layout + touch typing.
My only gain with Colemak is that typing feels smoother than Qwerty, but I can't honestly recommend anyone the switch. Using other computers, which are all in Qwerty, is now unconfortable.
Interestingly, the speaker part and the keyboard part are completely separate. The "cable" consists of four separate cables (keyboard, power, line out, mic in) in a thin sleeve. Mine was supplied with AT plug on the keyboard cable and Y-adapter that converted PS2 into AT DIN and barell jack for the speaker power. The keyboard label indeed says it is powered by 9V DC, but I guess that never really happened as PS/2 is 5V no matter what various devices say.
Edit: And as for the supper hard to find nowadays part: I suspect that part of the reason is that the keyboard module inside the thing is ridiculously sensitive to even minor spills.
It's good enough for writing long sessions and reliable enough to type on without much thinking.
It has great features though. Automatic backlight and standby via hall sensor, great key texture and weight, scissor switches instead of bog-standard membrane, etc.
It's not a mechanical keyboard and not smooth as one, but it's not an enemy of fingers and hands.
Logitech's bolt receiver is great though. Encrypted, low latency and has native Linux support via Solaar.
I have 3 mechanical keyboards, but one is too big, others are not in my native layout and miss a couple of keys which I need for certain characters, so they are delegated to long coding sessions at home.
- nearly made me cry.
- solved my back pain.
When you didn't learn to type properly, relearning to type can be a very difficult task; re-learning on a split keyboard is particularly unforgiving. Around three weeks into re-learning I was convinced I would never learn properly and that I'd wasted a lot of time and money (I was freelancing at the time) on something that wouldn't help me eat, never mind sleep.
Two weeks later I was back up to normal typing speeds, a month after that I was faster than ever. Two months or so after that, my back pain was gone.
Of course, my back pain was caused by sitting lopsided - something an overdominant hand on a standard keyboard pushes you towards. No amount of exercise and posture correction was solving it - but when the true cause was resolved it cleared up (with exercise) very quickly.
I'd buy this keyboard again in a heartbeat.
YMMV, ergonomics are highly personal with respect to your body size and proportions. We didn't have the proliferation of keyboard layouts then that we do now. Perhaps if the Iris or Corne had existed then, I would still be using my thumbs for modifier keys in a 40% layout. I never got the hang of tapdance or hold modifiers.
The Atreus layout is the only one I can still use somewhat, because the thumbs are held closer to the hand rather than splayed out.
Oh you mean… OK. The one on my 2008 unibody MacBook, which I likely put the most hours in on of any of them. Then the one on my ancient and lovely Thinkpad T240 — one of the most pragmatically delightful computers ever — and probably the N33SX I owned in 1992.
The keyboard on the M1 Max MBP is quite nice, too.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045464/
Fatar learned a lot of lessons from Yamaha in that regard.
Looking forward to adding an Expressive E Osmose to my rig soon ..
Just the fact that a synth thing was so (relatively) affordable and accessible and also made music we heard all the time.
I should probably make a Dexed thing. Ultimately I don't even play an instrument with frets, let alone keys, so it would only be for tinkering.
Get a Zynthian and dive right in to all the FM synthesis you can possibly imagine, and more. Its pretty freakin' powerful. Plus, you can do all kinds of mad things with it, vis a vis oddball controllers and such.
I cannot fathom all my collegues who still use non ergo keyboards and mice...
I used a friend's ErgoDox a few years ago, and quite liked it, but what holds me back is the Topre switches. If only it was feasible to acquire individual Topre switches and put them onto a custom PCB...
Here's hoping someone on HN will swoop in and tell me "It's totally possible! Just _____!"
There is also the XVX Whisper switch, with has a Topre-like mechanism for Hall Effect keyboards: with a magnet under the dome. You could buy pack of switches but reviews say it is mushier than Topre.
I don't like the Ergodox-style keyboards myself because they're missing a row, and no amount of meta layering is going to convince me otherwise.
Voyager is not even a very ergonomic keyboard, but it’s good enough for me, I configured it so that it’s very convenient for me to use, I added some accessories to for better tilt, I’m good - my wrists don’t hurt anymore, and that was my goal
I should get an alternative to my old compact / flat apple keyboard one day though. It's been going strong for nearly a decade.
Going to such a different form factor feels enough like relearning to type that I found it also to be a good time to learn a better layout than qwerty.
I use my own layout called hubris:
https://github.com/jpease/hubris
But in the end the housing being out of plastic, it creaked, wobbled and just was not satisfying to type on.
I came from premium mechnical keyboards with solid steel or aluminum construction.
I ended up with the Neo Ergo, a middle ground. Not as ergonomic, but solid feel, no plastic and great looks too.
Edit: on second thought, I guess some people might not like the low switches?
Switching to orto without solving a real bottleneck is like changing Opel to Porshe but keep using a set of square wheels. Of course the car will run better, but...
After sharing this with some people, it turns out that a lot of speed gains, and maybe wrist pain improvement, comes from people that switch from Qwerty + peeking (and sometimes avoiding pinky) to Other layout + touch typing.
My only gain with Colemak is that typing feels smoother than Qwerty, but I can't honestly recommend anyone the switch. Using other computers, which are all in Qwerty, is now unconfortable.