Uploaded March 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
My IBM Model M has served as my main keyboard for what is quickly approaching a decade. In all those years, I haven't had so much a hiccup out of it--until rather recently. Within the past six months, its once reliable operation began to be anything but, with more keys failing to register correctly with each passing day. Upon further inspection, a great many of the plastic rivets that hold the internals together had failed, sitting loosely on the bottom of the case.
As is known as bolt-modding a Model M, those plastic rivets can be replaced with much more durable bolts, nuts, and washers. After performing the bolt-mod for the very first time (complete with a few blunders along the way), that was seemingly all that was necessary to get my keyboard operational again... at least for a number of months. Eventually, however, the same misbehavior soon returned with a vengeance. It got to the point where the entire keyboard was totally unusable.
Recalling how questionable the traces on the membrane looked when I had everything disassembled during the bolt-mod process, for around $25 shipped, I elected to buy a brand new membrane directly from Unicomp, the folks that continue to produce the "new" Model M.
Unfortunately, the only caveat of replacing the membrane is that the keyboard does need to be disassembled quite extensively, something that I could've avoided doing twice if had opted to replace the membrane during the bolt-mod process.
I'm pleased to report that with its new membrane, my Model M has been returned to 100% operational condition. I suspect that its original membrane would've continued to work flawlessly had liquid not worked its way inside during an extensive, yet obviously ill-fated cleaning of it many months prior to this whole debacle. Live and learn!
#ibm #mechanicalkeyboard #keyboard
My IBM Model M has served as my main keyboard for what is quickly approaching a decade. In all those years, I haven't had so much a hiccup out of it--until rather recently. Within the past six months, its once reliable operation began to be anything but, with more keys failing to register correctly with each passing day. Upon further inspection, a great many of the plastic rivets that hold the internals together had failed, sitting loosely on the bottom of the case.
As is known as bolt-modding a Model M, those plastic rivets can be replaced with much more durable bolts, nuts, and washers. After performing the bolt-mod for the very first time (complete with a few blunders along the way), that was seemingly all that was necessary to get my keyboard operational again... at least for a number of months. Eventually, however, the same misbehavior soon returned with a vengeance. It got to the point where the entire keyboard was totally unusable.
Recalling how questionable the traces on the membrane looked when I had everything disassembled during the bolt-mod process, for around $25 shipped, I elected to buy a brand new membrane directly from Unicomp, the folks that continue to produce the "new" Model M.
Unfortunately, the only caveat of replacing the membrane is that the keyboard does need to be disassembled quite extensively, something that I could've avoided doing twice if had opted to replace the membrane during the bolt-mod process.
I'm pleased to report that with its new membrane, my Model M has been returned to 100% operational condition. I suspect that its original membrane would've continued to work flawlessly had liquid not worked its way inside during an extensive, yet obviously ill-fated cleaning of it many months prior to this whole debacle. Live and learn!
#ibm #mechanicalkeyboard #keyboard
