DEC Ultrix Keyboard

[AndyJ]

Reading a page about a guy patching DEC Ultrix to run on a small single-board computer, I came across this:

"It is not a dumb keyboard. It has regions of keys, a bell, some lights, and can support differing autorepeat settings per key group."

Hm. Having the cursor keys repeat faster than the character keys could be very handy.

https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=33.+LinuxCard

[Muirium]

Key repeat rate should really be handled at the host, not on the keyboard, in my view. There’s nothing more disruptive than random crazy when you’re holding keys. It’s always the unintended triggers that getcha!

I’d implement a faster repeat for arrow keys in Karabiner, if I didn’t already use Alt to move around at speed, dropping down to bare arrows for fine character-level control. Alt + Arrows is my primary use for the key.

[AndyJ]

Alt gets prime real estate, but I might use an alt key once every two weeks, if that.

[Muirium]

Really doesn't hurt to use it. Word by word and para by para cursor movement, and a wealth of keyboard shortcuts for often used commands. It's a vital mod for me.

(Posting this as much to displace "prime real estate" from the forum spy, which keeps catching my eye as a spam target to kill! )

[kbdfr]

[…] (Posting this as much to displace "prime real estate" from the forum spy, which keeps catching my eye as a spam target to kill! )

Déformation professionnelle

[Muirium]

Sterling diagnosis!

[vometia]

Key repeat rate should really be handled at the host, not on the keyboard, in my view. There’s nothing more disruptive than random crazy when you’re holding keys. It’s always the unintended triggers that getcha!

I’d implement a faster repeat for arrow keys in Karabiner, if I didn’t already use Alt to move around at speed, dropping down to bare arrows for fine character-level control. Alt + Arrows is my primary use for the key.

Most DEC systems were multi-user, from mid-range up to mainframes, and the latency could be noticeable even for a locally resident computer: it would certainly be very much so for things like auto-repeat. As with most large systems, they'd farm out as much work as they could to specialised IO systems, so PDP-10s would use PDP-11s for terminal IO, Vaxes (and later MIPS) would use ethernet-connected terminal servers using LAT and so on. Similar concept in some ways to 3270, except DEC tended towards line-based entry rather than screen-based (and could easily do single-character-based entry, obvs., which was less straightforward with IBM stuff unless you reprogrammed the 3174 controller; though I understand even vi was ported to the System/370 and was allegedly quite usable even in block-mode, though I can't quite imagine how it managed to do so and still claim to be vi).

Though I acknowledge that any keyboard mentioned in the context of a MIPS CPU and drivers was probably connected to a workstation. I currently have a pair of them cluttering up the hallway, albeit with Vax CPUs in mine, as I recently learnt I should check and preferably remove the on-board batteries as they can leak after a few decades and burn holes in the PCBs.

I wonder if some of the background is due to the construction of the LK201 and presumably successors: they were rubber dome but surprisingly not terrible to type on, and presumably a part of that is because rather than one large mat they used many small ones, each dealing with around a dozen keys IIRC. I hadn't really thought about it but I guess the circuitry dealing with the contacts could be similarly subdivided. Different key repeat rates isn't something I'm aware of encountering, the only unusual thing was an LK4xx keyboard with a PS/2 connector on it instead of the usual MMJ-with-a-dog-leg that DEC used. I still have it in the garage but never used it much as it has a really annoying key-click that I couldn't figure out how to turn off.

I think the only variation on the repeat theme that I've seen was thankfully brief trend for keyboards to have an actual repeat key: none of the keys had auto-repeat, but holding down a special repeat key would repeat whatever you typed last. At least I think that's how it worked as it's been over 40 years since I even saw one, but it could be something even more awful like using it as a modifier.

[Muirium]

Hey Vometia, nice to see you around again. Either you've changed timezone or came to DT to put your insomnia to some use.

You've got me thinking way back to the eighties and my first experiences with computers, too, and one of them did indeed involve INSANELY ANNOYING RRRRRRRRRRRRREPEAT RATE>_

Can't remember the specific computer—my first experiences were on Trash 80, Vic 20 and Apple II. But my unreliable haze of recall has green text on black and a bip-bip-bbbbbbbbip sound of some sort when I typed too slowly for the beast's taste. I'd never used a keyboard before, gimme a break! Why's this not alphabetical? What does QWERTY mean anyway? bbbbbbbbbb-bip. Oi!

>_

Naturally after typing *all* the swears—WILLIES SHAG SNOTTERS—and playing with an Eliza clone, the only purpose of that keyboard was entering BASIC code from voluminous listings in books and mags. So many arbitrary array entries, and so much POKE! Enough to put a kid off code forever!

[AndyJ]

Back in the old days, when we filed zeroes down to make ones...