[geeks] Keyboard list

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Mike Meredith <very at zonky.org>
>Date: 2008/01/10 Thu PM 01:24:07 CST
>To: geeks at sunhelp.org
>Subject: Re: [geeks] Keyboard list

>On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:51:50 -0600 (CST), Lionel Peterson wrote:
>> Since we all have opinions on keyboards, here's one persons take on
>> the ten worst (of all time?):
>> 
>> http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,139100/article.html
>
>He's got a big thing about Commodore keyboards hasn't he ? There were
>plenty of other keyboards with "non-standard" layouts at the time and
>the C64/PET keyboards weren't any worse than the others. In fact I seem
>to recall one machine had a keyboard with a reset button very close to
>the "backspace" key.

"Back in the day" keyboards were very expensive, one of the major components of the system (i.e. the Apple 1, @ $666 didn't include case, power supply or keyboard), and almost every "technical" magazine (Byte, etc.) had articles about taking surplus keyboards and rewiring them to work with the computers of the day (Altair, MITS, SWTP, etc.). Given Commodore's *aggressive* cost-cutting moves throughout their history, it isn't suprising that Commodore is so "well" represented on this list. Also, as many Commodores sold in the millions of units, they are quite popular and minor complaints would be multiplied by the number of users...

Personally, my first systems were (in order):

SYM-1 ("better" than the KIM-1)
OSI Superboard (6502-based single board computer with TV interface and keyboard included)
Atari 800 (I waited till I could afford the 800 - the 400 keyboard scared me off...)
Dec Professional 350 (College made me buy it)
Apple Mac Pro (1 Meg Mac - I wated till the memory included got reasonable)

And on...

Lionel