Fujitsu FM Towns FMT-KB205 review (Fujitsu leaf spring 3rd generation)

[@ObviousSchism]

I never get tired of the customary dig at freedom units.

[@romanlubij52]

Tbh that's always a highlight of any video for me. Love them! (I also wonder how has he not ran out of ideas for insulting the imperial system yet)

[@marcusrauch4223]

@@romanlubij52 that’s what I’m wondering about too.

[@Girvo747]

Same. “Freedom” units are so idiotic lol

[@poroniec]

@@Girvo747 that's crazy, what year did your country go to the moon?

[@kristoffer3000]

@@poroniec That's crazy, what year did you grow to be extremely fragile?

[@SeraphimKnight]

The two buttons at the bottom of the keyboard are to activate/deactivate kanji conversion! When you type japanese you do it phonetically and the system offers you suggestions as you type so those keys are for toggling those functions as needed. The two keys under the escape key are the conversion types you can select by the way. The top one is kanji and the bottom one is katakana. The key below the nav cluster says "execute". Not sure what exactly what it's used for but you can probably get some hints from the original OS this keyboard is for.

[@DTM_Mamoriya]

On this particular keyboard, the small keys below the spacebars appear to be the conversion keys, for turning kana into kanji. The long key below the arrow keys reads ”Execute”. The split spacebars are an assortment of tabs and shift keys alongside the spacebar.

[@MaoRatto]

Exactly was I was thinking.

[@MicroAC]

For some info on the layout, the two keys on the bottom are the standard "Convert" and "Don't Convert" keys seen on modern JIS-layout keyboards. What's actually interesting are the two keys above them, labeled "Shift Left" and "Shift Right." They're key elements of the rare "Thumb-Shift" layout, which uses those shift keys as macros to fit Japanese kana into the main three rows instead of spreading them across the number row as well. Japanese layouts don't actually have a split space bar; the space bar on this keyboard is the large bar to the right of the thumb shift keys.

[@Chyrosran22]

What I mean by "split spacebar" is that it's split up into multiple other keys, not that it's split into multiple space bars. This is standard for JIS layouts.

[@sutorippuwebmaster8783]

Can confirm, the eroge is partially why FM TOWNS has its dedicated enthusiasts. Same for the PC-88 and PC-98 honestly.

[@mixermaster10]

pc-88 also touhou

[@SockyNoob]

Pretty much lol

[@vanderan]

This is one of those boards I would love to see a modern remake of. Really cool switches and look. Wouldn't even mind if the only real change was a USB port.

[@daemonspudguy]

A video about any thing to do with the FM Towns was not something I expected see from you, so this is cool.

[@4Pickledonions]

He’s a keyboard reviewer on mostly obscure or old keyboards. what were you expecting ?😂

[@daemonspudguy]

@@4Pickledonions the FM Towns is incredibly rare and very few of them actually survived the years, and also never left Japan.

[@horacegentleman3296]

I love the look of this keyboard and the PC it belongs to.

[@enderbrine3000]

I know a small vendor in Japan that sold adapters for many old Japanese keyboards. I don’t think he sells any for FM TOWNS anymore though sadly. I do know he still sell adapters for the later models of the PC 8801 Keyboard.

[@blackjack8957]

This Thumb-Shift layout (came with OASYS word-processor) is what Japanese DVORAK style was popular among typists in 90s. Some people recommended me for fast typing but I didn't find the difference between JIS. It is like a 50% keyboard has two or three layers, the Japanese 50 characters divided by 2 are 25, almost the same as the alphabet. 25 characters in each layer, Left-Shift and Right-Shift key change the two layers. I had a big problem with phonetics. Though, I like the idea of thumb-shifting, could be useful for the modern layout. Thank you for the reviews, I'm glad that typewriters and word-processors in the list!

[@akatsuki2478]

親指シフトキーボードなので現代の日本語のキーボードとは全然違いますよ。 This keyboard layout is Oyayubi shift style layout(Oyayubi means thumb) ,so this is not modern Japanese keyboard style. The keyswitch you are pressing in the typing demonstration thinking it is the space key is a special shift key. There are two types of shift keys: thumb right shift key and thumb left shift key. In this style, two kana characters are assigned to one key (you know that by looking at the keycap, right?). The other kana character is entered by hitting the key at the same time as the thumb shift key. In Japanese, spaces are used less often than in English or other Western languages (punctuation is often used), and Fujitsu developed this as one of the most efficient Japanese layouts. It has become a layout that is not used at all, although there are still enthusiasts today. I translated it from Japanese, so there may be some English errors.

[@versaknight]

Thank you

[@sugitanobuki]

Thanks for the explanation. Anyone interested in Oyayubi shift keyboard layout, please refer to the Wikipedia article. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thumb-shift_keyboard

[@0atneilskeyboards575]

Yeeeeeeeessss. I love it when you upload. I love Fujitsu too. I've always been interested in the FM Towns pc keyboard but have heard conflicting information about it. Thank you for doing a review on this Thomas!

[@hjalfi]

Those leaf spring switches are really clever --- very minimalistic. I'd actually been vaguely wondering about doing something similar with a 3D printed flexible plastic leaf pushing on an ultracheap surface mount castanet switch. Looks like Fujitsu beat me to it by thirty years! I'm curious to know know why the same design wasn't replicated elsewhere, given the very low part count and high quality. Surely they must be easier to make than a Cherry-style switch?

[@opless]

small world 🙂

[@NiksSofa]

I made a custom PCB to give my IBM model M a USB port. it's now basically a QMK usb keyboard. I'm sure something similar could be made to get this keyboard running.

[@crytex6441]

I just received this keyboard a couple days ago!! Mine is marked KB-107 however. It was made December 1991 and has the spacebar in the correct place with the Ctrl where the caps lock usually is just like in a Unix layout. The legends also show English characters.

[@det.bullock4461]

The Fm Towns also had some of the best versions of some non-pornographic videogames. I know of some Lucasarts adventure games that have a FM Towns versions hailed as the best, like Loom.

[@MLX1401]

I appreciate that numpad coming with a calculator-style "000" -key. Would be so handy working with excel 😄

[@alexandernevalainen]

i have one of those mbc-885 and i can agree that they are smoother than any other switch i have tried, it does have the really faint clicking on the downstroke. wish i had looked up that it was not compatible with modern PC before buying it, it is just acting as a decoration at the moment and i don't know how to map keys for an arduino to translate it.

[@MiguelFarah]

Let us all note the keyboard has homing keys in (the equivalent to) F and J, plus (the equivalent to) A and ;:

[@SockyNoob]

At this point, the only Fujitsu keyboard you've not reviewed is the LiberTouch. Still trying to find one used, but it appears only a proxy site would work for acquiring one.

[@greyareaRK1]

Completely agree about the looks and sound. Great keyboard. I heard that the first (only?) attempt by the French to introduce metric to the USA met with a British pirate ship on the way. The diplomat died in captivity waiting for his ransom to be paid.

[@wkgmathguy218]

Yum, I think I'll swap in the Tandy 3000 next. Great to see you Tom, I hope all is well in your world :D

[@skryzskruzzle]

Also, another oddity is that while the "split backspace" keys are obviously unlabelled, the keys labelled "後退" ("backspace", I think), and "取消" ("delete", again I'm guessing here) are right next to what would be the [semi]colon key on modern keyboard (":"). Which makes me wonder what the 2 unlabelled keys are really for. To me this backspace/delete key location is so radical that I don't even see home-row fanatic alternate keyboard layout prescriptivists doing this.

[@notl33t]

The arrow cluster pleases me. :)

[@paradoxial4246]

chryosran uploaded, finally some good ASMR content

[@grproteus]

Wow this PC has a super-cyberpunk look to it!

[@splodeybaloney]

Interesting to hear about these switches right around the same time the Novelkeys crwam clickies just released, it sounds like they used a similar snap-cap style click while managing to keep the switch feel mostly linear, I’ll be interested to see if you get some and can compare

[@lemonyjuicey]

5:15 Novelkeys recently released a linear clicky switch, might be worth checking out 😳

[@Chyrosran22]

I messaged him about them already but he hasn't responded to me xD . He's very good at ignoring me xD .

[@MakenModify]

Such a cool board. Should not be to hard to convert, at least if you are cool with a brain swap... A protocol converter might be also possible but have no experience with that yet. Anyways great video and a really interesting board 👍

[@sir0herrbatka]

Good looking keyboard for sure.

[@ethur10n]

you gotta review the NeXT AAE keyboard or do a Alps SKCM Cream redux!

[@geno951]

Num pad on the typing demonstrations, please!

[@jacekruzyczka3058]

What puzzles me, is the complete absence of Latin characters on the key labels, despite for the fact that the key on the left edge, just above the left Shift key, seems to switch between Katakana (?) and 英小文字 (yingxiao wenzi; literally "small (lowercase?) English characters").

[@sugitanobuki]

Latin characters are shown on the bottom side of each key. You can barely see them in this video.

[@samuelschwager]

I hate the plastic clips. With age the plastic tends to get brittle and snap easily...

[@Yipper64]

1:22 I was half wanting to have the goal of owning this one day because I like retro consoles... but maybe not...

[@LuCallofDuty1]

Could you reach out fujitsu to make their protocols public so that the community can develop adapters?

[@Chyrosran22]

Probably not necessary. You should be able to hdlisten the outputs and convert accordingly. But again, I don't have any first-hand experience doing that.

[@LuCallofDuty1]

@@Chyrosran22 so the community can still develop adapters?

[@zakutenakazumiya1516]

I hate to ask... but sauce for that thing you talked about what games the Towns usually play? 😆 I wonder what'll get converted to USB first. The Brainless ptotocol NEC with Blue Alps or the Proprietary Fujitsu boards? Someone help Tom here. 😂

[@loz9324]

YAY!

[@braisedtoast9002]

Based keyboard man.

[@2old2steak]

If there's any doubt that you have the clicky fujitsus, trust me you don't. The tactility is weak but they're pingy as hell.

[@Chyrosran22]

Haha fair enough! It's hard to find anything about them really! xD

[@2old2steak]

@@Chyrosran22 Search for "Fujitsu N860-2500-V101 keyboard typing demo" if you'd like to hear them. Maybe you'll appreciate them more, but they're the most annoying sounding switches I've ever used and they covet the tactility of an mx brown. Can't say anything bad about the smoothness though.

[@Chyrosran22]

@@2old2steak Ah yes, they definitely don't sound as loud as that xD . Thanks for pointing this out, I was hoping someone could help out with that :) .

[@Laundry_Hamper]

...is that a tetris L-block next to the 0?

[@themagnushjort]

Looks like it but it's like a Japanese quotation mark.

[@Buugipopuu]

It's '『'. Which I believe is the equivalent of a double-quote when you're writing Japanese vertically. Conventional braces and quotes don't really work with vertical writing.

[@taylorphoe]

It sounds amazing! What modern keyboard would sound like this? Does anyone recommend anything?

[@tompramanaaccount8892]

Honestly, nothing. But you could try to replicate as closely as possible. Try to find a roomy plastic keyboard which is not much of a choice these days, my best bet is using NCR-80 with a linear thocky switch like jwk epsilon for example (that's the only thocky-based switch I tried so far) and tall profile keycaps like MT3, SA, etc. Don't use any foam and you done. It's probably not as good as this keyboard with that characteristic vintage pingy sound, but maybe it's gonna be close. Good luck.

[@taylorphoe]

@@tompramanaaccount8892 thanks for the recommendation 😀

[@SeraphimKnight]

Those keycaps are thiccccc

[@middle_pickup]

1:20 Oh, Japan...

[@rolfathan]

0:32 the design on that tower feels shockingly ahead of its time.

[@MaoRatto]

1:29 You could have just said HENTAI, you literally said the most redundant sentence ever. Hentai comes from the Japanese word " to pervert ", and over time became associated with hentai as both a noun, adjective, and verb. Most words don't do that in Japanese, but go very overly specific. 7:33 The lettering they use isn't a font, but a mix of two scripts, primarily... Hiragana, the harsher edge is Katakana. 8:10 That's not space bar in the center, but actually a shift bar. SHIFUTO+LEFT, and SHIFUTO+RIGHT top be exact. The very left where shift key is... That's A KATAKANA KEY and Lower Case Key for combinations of yu, yo, や　漢字 (Kanji ) is where the tab key is.... This keyboard or system in general is built around the early memory limitations and early keyboard design than ANYTHING ELSE. Where ; ' are for othjer things, more than likely as I do not own, change the types of keys being used While 0 - are the quotations. 8:44 It's a fairly rational decision, the letter is hiragana, but not a romanji style one. The bottom keys are for Earlier IME style stuff. From the video, the very bottom looks like i see " Mu ", something.

[@NigelMontezuma]

1:29 Take that you Netherlandsish fewel prepare to be smote

[@King-gc4yt]

epic

[@Aeduo]

That is a nice looking keyboard but yeah given all the porn games, one may probably want to spray it down with bleach before bringing it in to the house.

[@MattSiegel]

hmm, a jam jar keyboard? hmmmm :)

[@NebulonRanger]

Inchenheit feetyards LMFAO

[@3jake5mee]

just saying… your home country invented imperial units/system 😂

[@Chyrosran22]

My home country never used Imperial units to begin with :p .

[@daemonspudguy]

@twevetgaming4061 he's Dutch, not British.

[@ianmoone8244]

2:47 Not just USA, England, Australia, Canada...disgusting when I listen they calling Metric System!!!

[@ellenorbjornsdottir1166]

OrTogonal.