MADE IN UK "IBM SPACE SERVER 1394099" Buckling Spring Mechanism Terminal Keyboard DEADSTOCK

A vintage keyboard manufactured by IBM around the 1990s.

It's one of the keyboards I collected when I was a junior high school student.

Rather, I originally had three deadstock units, but I tried selling one about two years ago, so only two remain.

I disposed of most of the ones I owned at the time, but I kept this one and an Apple one.

No matter how many times I try to convert it, predictive text always turns into "backlink", I wish it would stop.

MADE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.

An IBM UK product.

When opened, it's stored like this.

From DATE : 10-08-99, I thought it was October 8, 1999, but what do you think?

If that's the case, and considering the "99" at the end of the model name, was production only a single run?

I don't recall seeing similar UK models since I purchased it back then.

The logo is the same as the "MODEL M" series.

However, the manufacturing year for MODEL M disappeared after the 80s.

I suspect it's a model made after the molds for MODEL M and SPACESERVER series, which were used by IBM US and became unnecessary, were sent to the UK.

Now, let's look at the switch.

Matryoshka style.

The cup is still inside.

This is the spring.

Buckling spring mechanism.

In Japanese, it's called a 'zakutsu bane kikou' (buckling spring mechanism).

For details, refer to the blog run by an IBM engineer, which I also used to read.

(I recently found out that their website is back up and that it was run by a genuine IBM engineer.)

https://ide-research.net/keyboard/history-of-keyboard-mechanism/buckling-spring-mechanisms/

The electrical system is the same as PS/2, but it uses an RJ45 connector, familiar from LAN cables.

It can be converted to be used with modern PCs via a microcontroller, but at the time, I had to order an "Arduino" model that wasn't available in Japan from overseas, and I lost interest and left it as is.