deskthority

I came accross this nice stock photo, that still sees some use.
What is this keyboard that ages so gracefully ?

Don't know about the keyboard but it looks like a Summagraphics puck in his left hand and a Bit Pad (or some equivalent) in the right. Maybe re-branded to Pericom? For some reason the guy reminds me of Neil Buchanan - might be the hair and the arty activity

Nah, that's far too small scale to be an Art Attack!

Haha yes, you're probably right:

It's this guy.

002 wrote:Don't know about the keyboard but it looks like a Summagraphics puck in his left hand and a Bit Pad (or some equivalent) in the right. Maybe re-branded to Pericom? For some reason the guy reminds me of Neil Buchanan - might be the hair and the arty activity

Fact of the day: Did you know that is now a guitarist in a "New Wave British Heavy Metal" band?

From:


To:

He certainly looks the part of crusty old rocker but he still has a way to go before he looks like a dried up pig grogan like Keith Richards

The guy in the original photo looks suspiciously like a hipster to me. Are you sure it's not an advert for a giant novelty retro iPad case?

Also, not the faintest on the keyboard, I'm afraid.

002 wrote:He certainly looks the part of crusty old rocker but he still has a way to go before he looks like a dried up pig grogan like Keith Richards

It's a dangerous road, you might end up looking like your grandma/Steve Tyler.

funny difference in coolness between vintage hairdo's and keyboards !

002 wrote:Don't know about the keyboard but it looks like a Summagraphics puck in his left hand and a Bit Pad (or some equivalent) in the right. Maybe re-branded to Pericom? For some reason the guy reminds me of Neil Buchanan - might be the hair and the arty activity

So from left to right we have a Summagraphics puck, a mystery keyboard, a mystery joystick (which looks familiar, but can't remember the brand) and what I think is actually a Kurta digitizing tablet.

I was thinking the keyboard seems to have a small logo that looks like it could be a '3M' -logo, and I do think they made keyboards under that brand name at some point. Could that be it ?

Pericom Graphics Terminal?

http://www.computerwoche.de/a/pericom-t ... en,1166214 (in german)

could very well be, but why would they have their logo on their tablets and not on their keyboards ?
Sometimes I am really surprised how little information you can find online about the lesser known brands: there is hardly anything on Pericom, or that is what Duckduckgo tells me at least..

Often enough, keyboards had no logos on them. For instance, when I found the Honeywell, I had no idea what it was, as alone they keyboard doesn't say:



Unlike the Honeywell, however, this mystery computer doesn't tell on its display either. See how clean both board and screen are in design? Very nice. If the graphics shown were fancier, I'd be suspicious.

This keyboard looks gorgeous although I have no idea regarding its brand and model. The monitor however bears a certain ressemblance to this one from a Amdhal mainframe terminal.

Model 5860 or 470V/6 depending on sources.



The keyboard doesn't match though.

Hey Trankzen,

woah, again another unknown brand of mainframe-cum-consoles manufacturing, and with great design too !
The resemblance is quite striking indeed, although that mainframe must be at least 10 years earlier. And now I totally need the keyboard on that picture ofcourse.

So I search on google images for pericom graphics terminal...

This is a Google Attack. This is a Google Attack. This is … Google Attack!

I started digging around more too the other day. Pericom had some GKS-GRAL workstations but I think they were a bit old to be the one pictured in the original post. Models I've found are MX2000, MX8000, Graph Pac and Falco.

Searching on "GKS-GRAL Workstations" yields some cool (if unrelated) image results... all from here. My guess is that the Pericom workstation is a successor to one of these old beasts?...Well before my time, though

The more I think about it the more I feel the keyboard and the other elements do not originally belong together. The Pericom and Kurta tablets are a given, but I feel even the monitor isn't related, the color looking a bit off(well, that Amdahl console pic is a clue as well). Maybe the joystick came with the keyboard too, they look similar enough.

002 wrote:

I have the keyboard from the middle machine (a Whitechapel Computer Works workstation keyboard) in my room somewhere... it's a rather uninspiring foam and foil keyboard, but very heavy (the case is made of metal)

Right hand machine is an ICL PERQ (later model than the one in the wiki article)