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The MCA bus was far better then the then common ISA bus but the downside is that IBM wanted to make a quick buck by licensing it, but the cloners wouldn't play ball.

This did cause problems with drivers (such as the hard drive driver for Windows 95).

To get the best performance out of them, you had to use OS/2 (or Windows NT with a push).
 
At the airline I worked for at the time we had Raytheon and Incoterm terminals. You had one terminal for weather reporting, another for crew scheduling, and yet another for flight plan maintenance.

Around 1988 or so all the terminals disappeared and replaced with PS/2 Model 70's, which I believe was a 386 machine. They were running an IBM program, the name escapes me now, that divided the screen up into four different sections. You could "jump" between the different sections, of make one section full screen if you so desired.

They ran OK. So that was my experience with the PS/2.

You still had to call an IBM CE to fix the things. I saw how it was put together when I saw a CE replace a power supply. I was amazed that there weren't really any wires in the machine. Everything was modular and plugged into each other. It took the guy about 8 minutes to change out the PS.

And thanks for the view of the reasoning behind the PS/2. It all makes better sense to me. MCA.. Micro Channel Architechture?
 
MCA

Yep, Micro Channel Architecture, the 1st mainstream, full 32-bit bus on PC's.

 

I have IBM CE training, I worked there for 3 years, I can work on 3490/80 and 3420 tape machines. It's a neat thing. The Model 70 could either be a 386 or a 486, but the nameplate would reveal which. It was one of the more popular models.

 

-Tim
 
I had an IBM PS2 As a Home Computer

I bought it used many moons ago. My mother used it until 1999 or so to type her term papers, check email and do some largely text based web stuff. It worked fine for that. After she got a better computer, I gave it to a friend to index her recipe collection. Never ever failed to start and while slow, never got a blue screen with that machine and never had it lock up.

I use Ubuntu at home now. I didn't want to upgrade my 6 year old computer for Windows 7. I have Windows 7 at work, which I like well enough now that I am used to it. HATE the ribbon on MS Office products.

I agree about the original IBM keyboards; they absolutely were the best thing in the world to type on. Nothing modern compares.
 
At my old job, I did data entry/transcription and a used an Model M keyboard, because I could type faster on it and it wouldn't move around on the desk like the cheaper keyboards did.

I'm going to get another M keyboard off of eBay and paint the case black to match the new computer.
 
"Cool, please post some pics when you hare done!"

 

<span style="color: #000000;">I will be more than happy to!  I have a model M keyboard, but it has some some problems that I don't know if they are fixable or not. 1.  The "W" key works intermittently.  2.  The backspace key sticks sometimes and I end up deleting a whole line text before I realize that it has stuck.  Other than these two problems it works perfectly.  I'm getting used to this cheap ass HP keyboard little by little.  I do like being able to control volume with this keyboard.  I also have to get a PS/2 to USB adapter in order to use the Model M keyboard.  The adapters that are made for use on a mouse won't work.  There a special adapter just for keyboards, that I can get from clickykeyboards.com.</span>

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I had a sticky enter key on my model M keyboard, probably caused by me accidently washing off the grease that coated the metal spokes. The grease can dry out as well, which could be what’s causing the issue with your keyboard.
 
When I'm on vacation next week, I will have to take the key caps off, and find out whats going on with the backspace and the w keys. 
 
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