JavaScript disabled or not supported
It appears you have prevented JavaScript from running in your web browser or are using a web browser that does not support JavaScript. Admiral Shark’s Keyboards presently requires JavaScript for quality-of-life features like switching between light/dark mode, navigating via title or image and copying search query links, and is necessary for the keyboard matrix simulators, keyboard property modals, interactable slideshows and image size optimisation. Please consider enabling JavaScript or using a web browser that supports it for a fully-featured and correctly working experience. If you have suggestions for reducing JavaScript dependency, feel free to let me know.
45 years ago today, on 12thAugust 1981, the computing landscape changed forever. IBM launched the Personal Computer, the vessel that kickstarted x86’s popularity in computing at offices and homes alike. It was, of course, not a feat IBM achieved by itself – the IBM-compatible “clone” market is what helped keep the ecosystem prominent in the long run. But I like to think a big part of its success was its keyboard. Not the perfect layout as most may agree, but certainly a competent, well-built keyboard – the Model F/XT. Thus to celebrate, in the most appropriate way for Admiral Shark’s Keyboards, we will look at this keyboard, where it came from, and what it became. Of course, with context as needed, including what led to the IBM PC, and both who and what was behind it.
Before the PC, IBM released products adjacent to a personal computer, and toyed with the idea of a personal computer throughout the 1970s. The PC’s type number, 5150, places it in the lineage of the 5100 Portable Computer, and the 5110 and 5120 Computing Systems. 5100 in turn is an evolution of a prototype computer known as SCAMP (Special Computer APL Machine Portable), which was developed at the IBM Palo Alto Scientific Center in 1973.[4]William C. Lowe, an executive in the IBM General Systems Division (GSD) at the time, was considered instrumental in foresting this prototype. The 5100 was touted as a “personal computer” by some in the media, but it was a very expensive and not accessible to many people. It was notable for being portable though (for 1975), emphasised as IBM’s smallest computing system to date at that point.[5]
Tommy R. Hardy, a now-veteran IBM designer, conceptualised some interim ideas for a personal computer, including the “Yellow Bird” in 1976 and the “Aquarius” in 1977, both vaguely wedge-shaped in a form factor not unlike the later Commodore VIC-20, 64, etc., albeit bigger. Aquarius even made it to a pre-production prototype, but ultimately dismissed due to lack of confidence in its use of bubble memory modules. When Atari’s 8-bit computers launched in 1979, IBM also considered aquiring Atari and utilising the 800 as a basis for the PC. Hardy also conceputalised a pearl-white, IBM-branded 800 to this end,[6]but this idea proceeded no further. The next big thing, though, is Datamaster.
It would be impossible to have a discussion about the PC and its keyboard without talking about the IBM System/23 Datamaster, an influential experience for IBM that aided them in the PC’s development and its keyboard. The 5322, the original “desktop” (all-in-one) Datamaster, was released in July 1981. It was followed by the 5324 “floortop” (tower) Datamaster, announced on 18thMay 1982.[10]They were Intel 8085-based microcomputers intended to run business applications written in BASIC.
The development for Datamaster began in February 1978, and its hardware was ready by July 1980. However, as recalled by IBM engineer David J. Bradley, who worked on Datamaster, its launch was delayed by a year and to just a month before PC thanks to IBM deciding to develop the Datamaster’s BASIC more in line with the IBM System/34 midrange computer’s implementation of it.[11]The 5322’s styling is attributed toTommy R. Hardyvia its U.S. design patent (275,285), which was filed on 4thFebruary 1980. The design at that stage was largely like the finished product, though the keyboard layout is slightly different, with extra keys and a non-stepped Enter key. If design patents for 5324 exist, I was not able to find them during my research.
The Datamaster keyboard establishes the basis for every other keyboard discussed today. It is presently the earliest confirmed Model F keyboard implementation to make it to market, which would soon expand into an entire family of IBM flagship keyboards prominent for the first half of the ’80s. They all usecapacitive buckling springs, a keyswitch design by Richard Hunter Haris (U.S. utility patent 4,118,611), where pressing a key compresses a metal coil spring underneath in a way that it eventually “catastophically” buckles, which in turn pivots a small plate made of a capacitive material atop a capacitance-sensing PCB called a “pad card”.
The 5322 keyboard is acomplete sub-assembly (CSA)that sits inside the host Datamaster. The keys are arranged in a layout derived from the Model B-basedIBM 5251/5252 Display Station Typewriter Keyboard, which was IBM’s most immediate and common pre-Datamaster keyboard design. The aforementioned pad card bears a 12×8 key matrix and an Intel 8048 as its controller. The keyboard uses aparallel-style interfacewhere an inverted 7-bit scancode is sent across separate scanbit lines at once and together. Like its layout, its scancodes are alsoderived from the 5250 family. On the receiving end, according to RetroAND (bitspassats.com), the Datamaster has an 8255 Programmable Peripheral Interface configured for mode 1 input. As the keyboard is completely internalised, it connects directly to the 5322 motherboard (CPU planar board) via an 8×2 header.
As the 5324 is a distributed system, its version of the keyboard is discrete, connecting to its host via a DB-25-terminating cable. Chronologically, this was released after the PC, so it derives its styling from the PC’s keyboard, but with a considerably enlargedcover setand slightly longerriser feet. It may sometimes be confused with theIBM 5291/5292 keyboardalso discussed later, but the 5324 keyboard has the largest bezel between them, to the point it sometimes gets nicked the “bezelmaster” Model F keyboard. The 5324 keyboard reuses the 5322’s keyboard CSAs. But the 5324 keyboard adds a “keyboard adapter card” before its external cable. As explained to me by RetroAND, it has positive buffers and double negations for the control signals, likely to reduce noise. In effect, it prepares a design that was originally integrated into something, to be a distributed design that requires a longer cable.
Roll back the clock to July 1980: Lowe – who was involved with SCAMP – pitched the idea of a small, low-cost business and consumer computer to IBM CEO Frank Cary, who subsequently gave him a month to develop a prototype and to launch the finished product in a year. It was dubbed “Project Chess”. Lowe was promoted soon after, so Chess fell to Philip Donald (Don) Estridge.[17][18]The team consisted of about twelve engineers, who were famously able to develop the PC outside of IBM’s typical processes, ultimately allowing them to meet the one-year deadline, rather than complete it in 2 to 5 years like most other IBM systems of the time.
The earliest sketches of what became the PC, from 10thAugust 1980, were only relatively recently published. They show that a lot of what became the PC were nailed early on, including its use of the Intel 8088, five expansion slots, two floppy diskette drives, use of ASCII instead of EBCDIC, and a detached Model F-based keyboard. There are some notable differences, of course, including the display controller, the power supply unit’s location inside the PC, and that it originally specified 8″ floppy diskette drives instead of 5¼”.[19]But all in all, it is still recognisably the PC.