Am 26 Aug 2004 9:05 meinte Mark Wickens:
> OK, this one is bound to get a few responses:
> List the best keyboards you have ever used.
Oh, that's simple, it's the SIEMNS low profile terminal
keyboard, introducted with the series 975x termainls.
While I kept the old terminal (*1,*2), I had no problem,
to say good bye to the old, almost 2 inch high keyboard.
The layout was basicly the same, just as flat as todays
keyboard.
Second comes of course the original PC-D keyboard, which
was in fact a striped down version of the 9750 design with
way less keys ... only some 125 or so. After that? No real
lovable keyboard came along.
> I'm a great fan of dedicated keys, and function keys on the left. Whoever
> decided to put the out of reach at the top of the keyboard needs their head
> examining!
Well, the 8160/9750 keayboard had over 140 or so keys (I
have to count them). It was _rightsized_ roughly you had
5 areas:
20 localy programmable keys (each for 16 char) on the left,
next the alpha section (as allways) followed by what could
be called the cursor block ... But unlike today, it was
made up of _24_ keys with separate functions. Next was a
numeric block, mostly like todays PC-Keyboards (except,
again it was 19 different keys). Above all a row of special
functions, message handling keys, short message keys and
function keys (again some 20 keys) was located.
It is just a dream. I men, let's take just the simple left
tab key, mising on todays PC - how easy table handling is,
if such a _dedicated_ key is available. Not to mention all
the oter cursor controls. The term full screen editor becomes
a complete new meaning.
Arround 1986 I added a little controller to attatch the
Keyboard to a PC, but there where to many programms working
with low level scan codes and such to make it worth. Maybe
today, it could be possible to reach again the level of
comfort we had 25 years ago.
Yeah, did I mention that I'm talking late 70s *G*
Gruss
H.
*1 - Hey, after all it was a real vector display, so an
'A' was made up from 5 straight lines, and not a
cloud of glibberisch pixels.
*2 - Well, and in fact, just because the new terminal was
based on a micro processor instead of a TTL graveyard
didn't make anything better. The 8160 slicer did in
fact interpret the screen codes as a programm code
and produced the desired effects, which resulted in
some nice features, never seen again in other machines.
--
VCF Europa 6.0 am 30.April und 01.Mai 2005 in Muenchen
http://www.vcfe.org/
Received on Thu Aug 26 2004 - 10:21:59 BST