What is this abomination with no space bar but instead a space button in the bottom right.
ZX81 Mechanical Keyboard
31–40 of 51 posts
Re: ZX81 Mechanical Keyboard
#32What is this abomination with no space bar but instead a space button in the bottom right.
Seems like it's nostalgia based on what the ZX81.
Sure, having the space button be on the bottom right seems silly, because you'd have to use your pinky finger instead of your thumb; and the thumb is much stronger than the pinky finger.
Typical keyboards these days have spacebars that are 5-7x the size of usual keys. This faces a similar problem: Instead of your thumbs being able to press useful keys, the thumb can only really press spacebar (without moving from home row); and the pinky fingers get used for all the other stuff.
Re: ZX81 Mechanical Keyboard
#33What is this abomination with no space bar but instead a space button in the bottom right.
It's replicating the ZX81 keyboard, including all the quirks except for the horrific membrane keys.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Sinclair...
Re: ZX81 Mechanical Keyboard
#34TIL just how reasonably (relatively speaking) priced it is to get completely custom keycaps.
I'm surprised the legends have 4 colours for that price, too.
This makes it much more tempting to get a set which describes something like Miryoku.
Re: ZX81 Mechanical Keyboard
#35TIL just how reasonably (relatively speaking) priced it is to get completely custom keycaps.
The place where it breaks down is if you want to build a keyboard that doesn't use a typical collection of contours and widths of keys or a subset thereof. I haven't found a shop that'll do a "nonstandard" collection of keys as a package and the prices for one-off custom keycaps are not economical for a set of 50 or 70 or whathaveyou.
Re: ZX81 Mechanical Keyboard
#36What is this abomination with no space bar but instead a space button in the bottom right.
It's replicating the ZX81 keyboard, including all the quirks except for the horrific membrane keys. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Sinclair...
keys which Microsoft decided to bring back in their original Surface line.
Re: ZX81 Mechanical Keyboard
#37That is a sweet keyboard. It is rather better than my homemade one from 1982 https://twitter.com/njcw/status/1368566103933337603 My dad gave me a old keyboard from something and I traced the zx81 PCB to discover how it was wired, then rewired the new keyboard the same. I connected it by burning a hole in the case with my soldering iron to poke the wires through! It was a dream compared to the membrane keyboard.
I loved hacking Sinclair machines. I still have my first ever ZX Spectrum, complete with holes in the case and reset button mod.
The ZX printer brings back memories too. I remember naively printing the source code for a game I created only to come back later and find it completely faded and unreadable.
Re: ZX81 Mechanical Keyboard
#38What is this abomination with no space bar but instead a space button in the bottom right.
Typing on a ZX family machine was different. The keys look busy because you didn’t type out the keywords like you did on most other machines. Instead, a variety of keyboard modes inserted them - along with the required spaces - for you. To load a program from tape on a ZX Spectrum you simply pressed J, which would insert the keyword LOAD along with a trailing space, and then hold Symbol Shift and press P twice to get “”.
The space button was only needed when writing regular text, which was much less common on these machines.
Re: ZX81 Mechanical Keyboard
#39Similarly, replacement keyboards for the Atari 400 comprise, I estimate, one third of hardware advertised in Atari magazines of the era.
Re: ZX81 Mechanical Keyboard
#40What is this abomination with no space bar but instead a space button in the bottom right.
Typing on a ZX family machine was different. The keys look busy because you didn’t type out the keywords like you did on most other machines. Instead, a variety of keyboard modes inserted them - along with the required spaces - for you. To load a program from tape on a ZX Spectrum you simply pressed J, which would insert the keyword LOAD along with a trailing space, and then hold Symbol Shift and press P twice to get…
Right -- and there is a hugely important consequence of this design for people learning to program:
It was almost impossible to enter a syntactically incorrect program. Because the keyboard routines were doing the work of what would now be a lexer and parser.
The keyboard would only let you enter syntactically valid code.
One other nostalgia side-effect; where many games for eight bit computers used Q-A-O-P- for directional controls plus action, Sinclair games typically defaulted to Q-A-O-P-M, as a result.