Battle of the Battlecruisers

[sixty]

No, not SC2. These:



Top one wins on the Cherry side in terms of size. Middle on in terms of weight. 5.1kg is pretty much unbeatable I think.

[xbb]

The bottom one is a G81?

[sixty]

Yes, but all the top rows are still MX keys anyway.

[xbb]

Is that rare? I found some a week ago or so

[guilleguillaume]

The REUTERS one is impressive. When did you receive it? Last time I read your thread was weeks ago I think.

Any pics from the colour Keycaps?

PD: Yes, I entered thinking about SC2

[kbdfr]

Is that rare? I found some a week ago or so

If you mean the bottom one on the picture, not really. It's a G81-8308, it has lasered keycaps and 24 programmable keys.
It usually sells somewhere between 10 to 40€, but once in a while one even goes for 1€ - or at least used to a few years ago, so I have several of them .

Programming on the fly follows quite the same pattern as the G80-2100. One mighty difference, though, is that the software for the G81-8308 works with modern Windows versions and so you can save and retrieve the content of the keys (the software for both keyboards is not compatible, by the way). Another advantage is that it shows the actual layer in a display. But again, that does not compensate for MY switches...

The G81-8308 is the reason why I started to get interested in keyboards instead of just using them. I had always typed on a G80-2100 and was at first unable to understand why typing with that one felt so different

[xbb]

I see, thanks for the info and explanation

[hoggy]

Middle on in terms of weight. 5.1kg is pretty much unbeatable I think.

I want one.

[mintberryminuscrunch]

one of those would fit.. but they are rubber... I think
http://cgi.ebay.com/5-WINCOR-NIXDORF-CH ... 0814341990

btw: what means EUADSA in terms of key labeling?

[gore]

Is that an LCD on the Reuters?

[sixty]

Yes its a LCD display. Fully graphical, backlit and 728 pixels wide apparently. Did not yet figure out how to get it to work.

[webwit]

What kind of bastard layout is that?? US ISO?

[xbb]

What kind of bastard layout is that?? US ISO?

That's the kind of thing I'm suggesting everywhere about keycaps group buys.
Just make 1 set of ANSI keys plus not optional few (4, US ISO) to make it usable on ISO keyboards... easy and cheap.

[gore]

Man I want one sooo bad. Worst time to be poor / moving house!

[webwit]

Man, these Cherry fanboys and their pussy Battlecruisers. No match for the the IBM Monster keyboards!

Here's a video of a match between a Cherry Battlecruiser and a IBM Monster F:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-pa0ha7Ngo

[Nova]

Some kind of Chinese keyboards.

[woody]

Some kind of Chinese keyboards.

And what looks like two (electronic) hihat pedals. That should explain the sticks.

[sixty]

I remember this was the Aprils fools joke in 2009 or 2010 from Google Japan. The funny part is that the keycaps all actually look very real. I guess google is rich enough to order a few thousand keycaps for a single joke!

[webwit]

I thought it was photoshopped, but I don't remember exactly.

[quadibloc]

What kind of bastard layout is that?? US ISO?

This is as appropriate a place for my question as any, I suppose.

It certainly makes sense that people will prefer the type of keyboard that they're accustomed to. So most people in the US will prefer the ANSI layout, with its different placement of the left-hand Shift key and the Enter key, to the ISO layout used in Europe.

However, I would have thought that the situation is not quite so unproblematic in Europe.

After all, in Europe, as everywhere else, people had typewriters before they had computers. And European typewriters, like those in the United States, tended to have 44 keys (not counting the space bar or keys for things like backspace) or less. So, even in Europe, at least initially, in the early days of the computer revolution, I would have expected that many computer users would have found the placement of the Enter key and the left-hand shift key annoying and inconvenient on the ISO keyboard, leading to pressure on computer manufacturers to provide a different arrangement, and, indeed, I even find it surprising that such an arrangement was adopted as the standard in Europe in the first place.

[daedalus]

I think American secretaries were more stubborn than European ones. We can thank them for glorious ANSI.

[webwit]

Got your time-line wrong. The IBM Model M defined the standard. Before that, there was a whole wave of microcomputers in the Eighties, all with their own layout. No one was pressing an ISO keyboard, there was no such thing. Also typewriters are hardly known for their ANSI style Enter key.

[quadibloc]

It's true that typewriters didn't have an ANSI-style Enter key. But the Model M keyboard made the closest approach it could to a typewriter Enter key, in terms of location, while having extra characters.

The IBM 3278 keyboard, admittedly obscure and specialized, and the original IBM PC keyboard, had many of the features of the ISO keyboard - the Enter key and the left shift key were similar. So a keyboard like the ISO keyboard certainly had visibility in North America.

[daedalus]

Also typewriters are hardly known for their ANSI style Enter key.

IBM Selectric III, 92-character configuration, 1980



The 96-character version is somewhat similar to the later ISO layout, although it's very much based on the IBM 5251 keyboard arrangement.

[quadibloc]

although it's very much based on the IBM 5251 keyboard arrangement.

There's something even more "based on the IBM 5251" than the Selectric III.

Take a good close look at that keyboard arrangement. Although a few keys do differ in width, every key on the IBM 5251 keyboard exactly corresponds to a key on the original IBM PC keyboard. Of course, that presumably is due to the Datamaster...

[daedalus]

Yeah, I think the idea with the Datamaster keyboard was to have something in the same layout as a 5250 for the business people who were used to using the terminals for 'midrange' business systems (It even has a Field Exit/Field +/Field -, which were all 5250-isms). The PC ended up with the same keyboard style because the engineers who worked on the Datamaster went on to work on the PC, and pushed for the same keyboard because of its quality.

Furthermore, the 5291, successor to the 5251, also used the same style of keyboard.



Of course, with subsequent keyboards, the lineage isn't quite as clear. To me, the AT keyboard seems somewhat like the 92-character Displaywriter keyboard with a numpad instead of the right hand editing block.



The Model M seems to have taken the alphablock of the Selectric III (both variants, for ISO and ANSI), with the rest of the keyboard resembling the DEC LK-201 and 122-key terminal keyboards.

[kbdfr]

Another nice battlecruiser: Ortek MCK-142 Pro.

It already has the modern 12 function keys above the alphanumerical field, but also still the old-fashioned 10 arranged in two vertical rows on the left, with the then new F11 and F12 curiously enough added on top.

Plus it has 24 programmable keys, with very comfortable one-key programming on-the-fly.

And it has double-shot keycaps on white ALPS switches. The modifyer keys have coloured lettering.