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Admiral Shark's Keyboards

Admiral Shark's Keyboards is my passion project to research, review and preserve information on IBM, Lexmark, Unicomp, Toshiba Retail and Lenovo keyboards for desktop PCs, ThinkPads, point of sale machines, mainframes and terminals. The main features are the queryable keyboard part number database, wiki, research and review articles, guides, and technical and factual resource collections for those interested in IBM and family keyboards and machines.

But, it didn't start off that way. Let me be frank - this was purely a project for me to test my technical skills with PHP and MySQL. I decided on the topic of IBM and family since that was my biggest emerging interest at the time, and my keyboard collection was used as a scenario to test a PHP library I am developing to help speed up the development of websites. Eventually, I realised there is a lack of centralised information for IBM keyboards and nothing really satisfied my love of nuance and discovery, so I've decided to take the project somewhat seriously from November 2019 onwards. Maybe I'll even make a half-decent web design in the future...

Things started to take off in early 2020 and I decided to make this project a large part of my free time. My current goals include building the largest repository of per-part number specs of IBM keyboards, authoring articles on interesting topics to further keyboard science and help educate others, creating tools and galleries for identifying keyboards, creating helpful diagrams and connection pinouts, and writing modding guides such as internal Soarer's conversions for different IBM keyboards.

Terms of Use, Use of JavaScript & Disclaimers

Nature of the site

Admiral Shark's Keyboards is a not-for-profit website. Third-party material (including any copyrighted content) is included under the legally acknowledged terms of "fair dealing" and no copyright infringement or claim of ownership is intended. Typically, all instances of third-party material are noted with inline references or acknowledgements at the end of a given page. If such a reference is inaccurate or missing, or you're the original content creator/owner of something you wish to have removed, please contact me to discuss the situation. All original content (eg, text and images I've authored myself) are available under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 terms.

Relationship with companies

Admiral Shark's Keyboards is not endorsed, sponsored or affiliated with International Business Machines Corporation, Lenovo Group, Lexmark International, Unicomp, Toshiba Corporation or any other company that is mentioned on this website. Whilst I write about all these companies, occasionally interact with them for research purposes, or even agree to help test their products, they hold no control over Admiral Shark's Keyboards, nor do I make anything in their name. Any instances of interaction will be noted on a per-page/per-article basis.

Accuracy of information

Admiral Shark's Keyboards strives to ensure that all information hosted on this website is as correct as possible, but because I am not an IBM, Lexmark, Unicomp, Lenovo, Toshiba etc. employee, I cannot absolutely ensure the accuracy of any piece of supposedly factual information considering such information can be based on assumptions and guesswork or can be derived from secondary sources in what is believed to be public domain. For the latter, information could be inaccurate due to human error, vandalism of sources, or speculation. If you find any piece of information that you feel is blatantly wrong or misleading, feel free to contact me to discuss the issue and possible resolutions.

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. Disabling your web browser's JavaScript support, using a plugin that disables it for you, or using a web browser that lacks JavaScript support will break these features though most of the website should still be accessible.

Liability

By using or acting on any information hosted on Admiral Shark's Keyboards, you agree that I am not liable for any accidents or damages that may occur from using such information. I am not responsible for any information displayed within the resources I use as sources of information. I am also not responsible for what may occur from others modifying and rehosting information gathered from this website.