Keyboard, you're not my type When I chose to wave goodbye to wage slavery by turning freelance some (cough) 19 years ago, it was during an era in which the principal means of electronic communication between IT journalists was called Cix. Computers were powered by coke burners and required a team of navvies to work the bellows; monetary currency comprised …
"what was the last bit of kit you had a PS/2 port on?"
MSI still make motherboards with PS/2 connectors. Local councils/ NHS trusts tend to want them. Partly to reuse keyboards and mice from the older kit being replaced (a 1000 keyboards and mice are worth a few extra PCs on the order) and in the case of NHS trusts, lots of legacy kit such as card readers and barcode scanners use the PS/2 ports.
... NHS trusts tend to want them. Partly to reuse keyboards and mice from the older kit being replaced (a 1000 keyboards and mice are worth a few extra PCs on the order) ...
More than that if the PS/2 keyboards in question have been splatter-proofed so they can be kept sterile with a quick wipe of disinfectant ... that doesn't come cheap!
<-- Autoclave icon, because there's no biohazard symbol available!
Gamer's keyboards solve the simultaneous key press problem by registering themselves more than once with the os. The Black Widow on which I type this text - very, very similar in general clicketyness to the original IBM keyboard - registers itself 3 times with the BIOS and also with Linux. Logitech ones even register themselves 6 times. Problem solved.
Didnt the USB issue have more to do with ghosting in the keyboard matrix? Proper mechanical keyboards dont have that problem though.
One thing I do know is that the PS2 version doesnt have a buffer, but is that really a issue with the current USB speeds? Doesnt it more have to do with the hardware itself?
> Even for machines with the sockets I must be missing something what difference that would make
PS/2 keyboards have two advantages, firstly they are n key rollover meaning that you can press ALL the buttons at once whereas USB only supports 6 simultaneous key presses.
Secondly PS/2 boards send a hardware interrupt on each key press. By contrast the USB bus is polled, which introduces a (tiny) delay, uses CPU time, doesn't guarantee the order of the key presses or even that they will actually make it through. This is further complicated by 'debounce' delays which render increased polling rates moot.
If you can use PS/2 then there is no reason to trade down to USB, especially if you are a gamer, but if you don't have it then it's probably not a burning issue.
There are two separate issues.
1. How many simultaneous keys can the keyboard handle? My laptop keyboard, which uses PS2 internally, supports approximately four key presses, plus modifier keys. e.g. I cannot type "QWERT" without releasing any keys (the "T" is ignored) though I can type "QWERL". The variance is probably a reflection of the matrix the keys are wired to.
2. How many simultaneous keys can the protocol (PS2 or USB) handle? As you say, PS2 is unlimited (it just sends key up/key down messages). USB sends a packet with eight bits representing the state of the eight modifier keys (shift, ctrl, alt and "gui" on left and right) and six bytes containing the key codes of up to six keys. So you get up to six keys with unlimited modifiers.
In practice, I've never used a keyboard that could handle unlimited key presses. Older PS2 keyboards tend to beep if you press too many keys. Maybe I've never spent enough money on one.
The keyboard hasn't evolved because it reached it's pinnacle with the IBM Model M. Indestructible & effectively immortal (most are over 20 years old and effectively in new condition.) Best key feel of any keyboard I've ever used. Accurate and fast. Heavy enough to beat someone over the head with if you want and then keep typing afterwards. The keys all pop off and it has drain holes, so it can even be run through the dishwasher (I don't do this, though, I pop the keys and scrape out all the cat hair every so often). I had one fall out of a box of keyboards and accidentally ran it over with the forklift. It still worked (...yes, it was damaged.) As AC (March 1, 12:47 GMT) says, people that pine over their old keyboards pine over them because they are not rubber garbage like too many keyboards these days (ESPECIALLY these days, when some vendors now thing everything will be touch screen and the keyboard is a barely needed afterthought.)
I'm now going to look up the Topre. I don't have that kind of scratch for a keyboard but I'm intrigued.
I never put one in a dishwasher but many years ago I knocked a cup of coffee over one, so I took it to the washroom and ran water through it until it came out clean then just left it on the window to dry out in the sunlight. It was still working fine a year later.
>Pay at least £75
don't know where you shop but quality IBM keyboards can be had for £7.20 inc VAT [ http://www.keyboardco.com/keyboard_details.asp?PRODUCT=304 ]. Unfortunately these aren't the versions with the wrist rest, which I purchased back in 2000 and not yet have one fail, although I have replaced the systems they've been attached too several times...
Otherwise I've been buying and using keyboards with lower case keycaps - these are fantastic for children (and adults with poorer eyesight and/or reading problems) as they are taught using lower case letters. But don't expect to get these or any decent quality keyboard in the high st.
The real irritation is that there are very few good trackballs/mice about. Currently the Kensington Trackball with Scroll Ring seems to be holding up well - although I'm not happy about the quality of materials used and the build quality, so will be impressed if they survive a whole year of use. {Would of preferred a Logitech Trackman Marble updated to include a scroll capability).
What is this newfangled PS/2 thing you're talking about...? Mine has a DIN-5 plug, and you better believe I'm not kidding - It's the keyboard I've bought with my first 386 PC. It's the only surviving component of that machine, and nowadays it's plugged in with a DIN/PS2 adapter, but it works just as fine as it did on day one - all it needs is a bit of cleaning now and then. It's not a heavyweight lead-base model, or even a particularly clicky one, but it sure as heck beats any "laptop-type" shallow-travel abomination for me. And please don't even ask me whether it has a windows key...
People are talking about Mechanical and Model M in the same comments. As a complete fan of the IBM Model M, I was actually disappointed to find when I tried to clean some Tizer or Irn Bru from one of mine (that child of mine will never be fully forgiven) that once you get through the deep hex head screws and plastic welded lugs, what sits under the buckling spring mechanism is still a membrane keyboard, just with the aforementioned spring and plastic rocker sitting on top.
So no microswitches (in fact, I'm not really sure any keyboard used microswitches), although keyboards from the late 1970's and 1980's had discrete push-to-make release-to-break key switches soldered directly onto PCBs. My Issue 3 BBC micro ended up with more solder on the back of the keyboard PBC than metal track, because the repeated strain on the soldered pins would lift the PCB track from the board, and break it.
I remember Newbury Data RS232 terminals from my time a University having the same problem. You would often find one with the 'return' key nor working, which everybody avoided, but could still be used with Ctrl-M instead!
Got myself a couple of Das Keyboard ultimate last year. Had to RMA one since apparently there was something wrong with it and gave up the ghost half a year later. Well it was swapped and I'm happily typing on the new thing. As for sound. I use one at home and one at work and nobody has yet complained about the noise levels and I do a lot of typing. But it helps people know if I'm in the office since they can hear me type hehe.
I'm a great fan of the Matias Tactile Pro; I have version 3, but the key switches are the same ALPS ones as in the latest (and in some of the classic Mac keyboards). I had the original one too, and wore it out after several years. Not that cheap - £100 - but well worth if if you really do spend a lot of time writing. It says 'For Mac' but it's USB, and works just fine for Windows. For Mac users, though, it's even more useful as all the odd symbols are on the keycaps too, which saves remembering them.
As endless tech pundits have pontificated for decades.
And maybe for mobile devices they are right. I don't get why more phones don't have a serious go at voice recognition, given that speech input/output is supposed to be a core capability.
But for fast high volume text input a panel filled with dish topped buttons looks the way to for the foreseeable future.
Of course people might mind less if the qwerty layout was not intentionally stupid, but with no consensus on a better one I guess we're stuck with it. But lets be frank, several of the others can stomp it into the ground for speed.
Guess I'm still waiting for that direct neural interface tech to read the text straight out of my brain, William Gibson style.
<sigh>
"I don't get why more phones don't have a serious go at voice recognition, given that speech input/output is supposed to be a core capability."
For that suggestion, you will be consigned to a special hell where you are eternally stuck on a bus with a load of teenagers speaking text messages into their phones.
The reason that voice-input isn't in common usage isn't necessarily technical, it's because people don't want it, principally because sitting in front of your computer talking to it makes you look like a massive arse.
Picture it. Men are, apparently, thinking about sex every seven seconds. So all that lovely prose written to bosses, clients, parents, friends, lovers (oh, wait), wife, husband, gas board, HMRC ad infinitum will be interspersed with pr0n.
Apparently.
...nd so she moved, in a lithe, almost lazy manner, toward me, lips parted... ^h^h^h^h^h. *
*Or whatever encoding method that will be adopted for a neural interface. As long as it isn't EBCDIC.
"The reason that voice-input isn't in common usage isn't necessarily technical, it's because people don't want it, principally because sitting in front of your computer talking to it makes you look like a massive arse."
No it's because I don't want to spend 20 minutes "making corrections" to a voice command produced document, that I could have simply typed up in 5 minutes.
The brain to finger interface, is surprisingly good, fast and easy - with a very high degree of accuracy.
The voice recognition typing systems - 10 years ago, they were horrible..... Dragon Dictate and Natural Speech...
and now?
http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2010/12/22/there-is-free-speech-recognizing-software-built-into-windows-7-that-will-take-dictation/
How close are we to the Star Trek ideal of conversational computers that never get it wrong?
Well, we’re getting there. It turns out that after a decade of buyouts, mergers and embezzlement scandals, there is only one major speech-recognition company left: Nuance Communications. It sells the only commercial dictation software for Windows, for Macintosh and for iPhone. Its technology drives the voice-command systems in cars from Audi, BMW, Ford and Mercedes and cell phones from Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Verizon and T-Mobile. It powers voice-activated toys, GPS units and cash machines, and it answers the phone at AT&T, Bank of America, CVS and many others.
Every year Nuance releases another new version of its consumer dictation programs, such as Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Usually it doesn’t add many new features. Instead it devotes most of its resources to a single goal: improving accuracy….
Ende Quote:
Yes the phone and bank voice recognition system is certainly so commendable to the point I refuse to use it, and I don't hold any more enthusiasm for the typing programs either......
"Of course people might mind less if the qwerty layout was not intentionally stupid, but with no consensus on a better one I guess we're stuck with it."
The terminal room in the European Economic Community offices had to cater for layout variants for the major country members. There were sometimes queues for the terminals. So when you sat down you didn't know if you were getting a QWERTY, QWERTZ, or AZERTY layout. They didn't provide a language specific one for Danish. In Scandinavian offices my most common typo was between the letters o,0,ö or o,0,∅- as they are all close to each other on the keyboards.
Talking with my Israeli godson on ICQ was interesting as he accidentally switched from Hebrew to English fonts and back again - and the displayed text automatically switched from left-to-right to right-to-left. One day I must ask him if he has to type numbers in the order of their least significant digits first.
"And maybe for mobile devices they are right. I don't get why more phones don't have a serious go at voice recognition, given that speech input/output is supposed to be a core capability."
Yes I am prone to violent compulsions at pure badly implemented and outright stupidity - and yes I have had the wave of Voice Dictation systems that flowed down the pipe and seemed to have disappeared......
Forever retraining the fucking programs to recognise speech...
It ended up being just easier to ignore them and not use the dictate to text functions....
Sure things may have improved.... BUT
Telstra in Australia (a royal Fuck YOU) use voice recognition in the directory assistance.... at least while your prepared to be stupid enough to engage with it.......
"Please name the person or company you are after."
"Over the hill chemists"
"I am having trouble understanding you. Did you mean "I am over the hill"? or "Are you on the pill"?"
ARggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
And it just gets fucking worse from there.
IF I actually have to call that shit hole of ineptitude (Telstra's directory assistance), I use a hands free phone, put it on the desk, I stay silent for the minute or so for the system to bypass all the automated bullshit, and wait till I can talk to a real person.
So unless the voice recognition systems really become consistently accurate and very sensitive to the nuances of human variations and subtleties - and run at 99.999% accuracy, the brain finger interface will be the final filtering and input system for some time to come.
Of course people tend to resent running at 99.999% accuracy also as well.
"Repeat after me children, "The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain. etc"
Of course people might mind less if the qwerty layout was not intentionally stupid
Myth (if there's anything here other than unsubstantiated opinion). The QWERTY layout was designed quite intelligently, to meet an important engineering requirement: splitting the most common English digraphs between the two sides of the keyboard, to minimize lever collisions.
But lets be frank, several of the others can stomp it into the ground for speed.
Yes, let's be frank. Please cite even one reputable study showing any other key arrangement permits a significantly faster typing speed for a majority of typists.
See for example [1], which cites many of the challenges to Dvorak's own self-serving study. Also note that while the author is a fan of the Dvorak arrangement and believes it reduces his RSI, his own (anecdotal) experience showed only a modest speed improvement with the Dvorak (from 80 NWPM to 90; that might save you an hour if you're transcribing an entire novel or something, but few people type enough for that to make a difference). And that delta could be explained by numerous factors besides the layout.
Other studies show advantages for the Dvorak of between 2 and 6 percent.[2] Hardly "stomp[ing] it into the ground".
As for voice recognition: it's been available on PCs for at least two decades, and some people do report having used it successfully to dictate when they were unable to use a keyboard due to injuries, for example. There are plenty of reasons why it's never become popular, as others have pointed out in this thread.
Personally, I have never found any need for anything more efficient than the keyboard for text input - not for writing code, or writing prose of whatever genre. (And I've written a lot of both.) Of course I do touch-type, having learned it, like Alistair, in my schoolboy days. And on a proper mechanical typewriter too.
[1] http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/jcb/Dvorak/
[2] http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2975/does-the-dvorak-keyboard-increase-typing-speed
The worst keyboard I ever used was an 80s era Olivetti. The first few millimetres of travel were lovely and cushioned. Then you hit the end stop. It was really quite peculiar. Clearly they had springs (it was a decent 'business class' product) but just didn't have enough travel.
The best I ever used was a Compaq keyboard of the same era. Even though I tended to hammer the keys those were so light that even I ended up floating my fingers across them.
Yep back then when you could hear and feel the keyboard 'click' on a chunky and quality keyboard.
I am a touch typist, and very short sighted (almost blind), thankfully (or not depends on your point of view) I don't have the same problem with random characters appearing in my sentences though (would make for interesting coding!).
Thankfully the computer here at work has a good feel, but as for the laptop, its an awful keyboard, I am constantly making mistakes on it, in fact I plug the PC's keyboard into it to use it, I HATE that laptop's keyboard with a passion, no feedback, no feel, no click, its dreadful!
Now at home, I have a 10+ year old 'Cheery' keyboard, it was white once upon a time, but as you might imagine its a bit grubby now, gives loads of feedback, clicks, very comfortable to use, never misses a click, but my partner, in her wisdom, tried to give me a very thoughtful valentines gift, by replacing it with a pink one, while I loved the colour, oh gosh how could I tell her it was awful, just like the laptop one, no feedback, keys in the wrong places, thankfully it was faulty! so I have my Cheery back till a replacement arrives, but she is determined to get rid of my old keyboard, over my dead body will that ever happen!
Modern Keyboards are cr@p and that is that! They do not make them like they used it.
Cherry still make some good mechanical keyboards, Filco are excellent, Das have a great reputation as do Leopold but I've not used either of those myself. Unicomp still make the classic Model M style clicky-clacky keyboard if you can get hold of them and they are exactly as they used to be made.
Mechanical keyboards are on the rise, they've become the latest and greatest for gaming and will be back in to mainstream computing soon enough. For now they're a little pricey compared to the regular ones but a worthwhile investment if you spend all day using one.
From what you're saying it sounds like you could do with giving something like a Filco Majestouch with blue switches a go as they have both a tactile bump and audible click when they activate. Then if you really want pink you can order a pink keycap set for it (WASD keyboards do them at around $50, they'll fit any standard Cherry switches).
I bought a Filco for home and then had to buy another for the office as there was no way I was prepared to use what they referred to as a keyboard after that. £200 in toal for both but well worth it as a year down the line they're both as good as when I bought them.
Keyboard icon as it sounds like you owe yourself a new one!
I had one of those, and it was very good (the idea is that you don't need to bend at the wrists). Unfortunately it was killed by a glass of orange squash :-(
According to real touch-typists I know (I only play one in Youtube dramas) the split was in the wrong place - I think the B was on the wrong side.
That was it. Those Microsoft bendy keyboards were brilliant. Because you kept your wrists at the natural angle - so there was much less strain on them.
Unfortunately, the B was not in the place that I learnt to type. It should be typed by the right index finger, not the left. I suppose if I'd bought one, I'd have learned to change my typing style. After all, when I worked in Belgium, I soon learned to cope with an Azerty (yuck!) and the fact that my KB didn't have a £ and was too old to have a € (ALT+0128 if you're interested).
I must say I'm much more of a glider on the keys than I used to be. I learnt at primary school, on an old Imperial manual typewriter. There was over an inch of travel in the keys - and my poor, tiny, 11-year-old, little fingers really struggled to get any ink on paper at all with those A's and P's... I had to really slam them down. I'm still a bit clickety-clackety when typing at full speed, or banging in something short like a command or web address. But I found that playing the piano got me to be a bit more delicate, once I'd moved from manual typewriter to computer.
I bought a bunch of old HP and IBM PC's a decade ago. for 10 each. They were all complete with mouse and keyboard. I tossed the systems and the mice. But now I do have a lifetime supply of My favorite keyboards. same feel as the ALPS based keyboards, but at about a tenth of the price, these things last and can be found second hand almost everywhere.
but that might be the reason that everybody had to switch to crap keyboards that break down on saturdayevening one day after warrranty ends.
This post has been deleted by its author
You'll be liking the one on the old IBM 5251 terminal then. Fully capable of derailing freight trains if left in the wrong place and so thick that if you wanted to use one as a door wedge you'd need to buy a medieval castle first. Built into a heavy steel casing, it looked a bit like a Commodore VIC-20 upgraded to survive nuclear warfare.
The thickness meant it was impossible to rest your hands on the desk while using it, so you didn't so much type on it as play it, like a maestro at a concert grand piano. Unfortunately, the only note it played was <CLACK>. One being typed on sounded like a Maxim gun and a roomful in use sounded like a squadron of Sopwith Camels and a circus of Fokker DIIIs in a dogfight. AFAIK the only keyboard ever made which offered deafness as a side effect in addition to RSI.
Bloody horrible, but utterly indestructible.
Nice article thanks.
We had one (decision data?) which had 2 rows of function keys: F1-F12 & F13-F24, need to hit F23? - no prob - we don't need no stinkin shift key.
But curiously, page up/page down was by using shift-up and shift-down arrow. By far a more popular key press than any of the upstart newly promoted function keys.
What the green screen god giveth, the green screen god taketh away.
Oh, yes and one word for decent keyboards... cherry.
The 5250 series keyboards also featured a bunch of keys that had no function, other than to lock the terminal with the "invalid key" indicator (which was cleared by hitting the keyboard-reset key). I always found that delightfully perverse.
Oh, and built-in hexadecimal character entry ("Hex" key) and keyboard macros (record and play keys). Made the 3270s seem downright intuitive.
I was sorry to get rid of our old twinax 5250 units. Yes, they were a horrible waste of space, since we could just run TN5250 emulators under Windows or UNIX; but you knew you were a serious computer operator when you were banging on that 5250.
I use a Krups Dominator myself... Company policy.
There is a youtube video of a chap modifying his keyboard to provide analogue W A S and D keys for gaming, I won't link to it as there is slight vulgarity in it, but a search for "XBOX Controller Mods: Analog WASD Gaming Keyboard " will bring up the goods.
It may not have been that good, but, my favourite keyboard was on my first computer. I was still at school and the schools computers comprised a BBC B, Apple IIe, a couple of Sharp MZ-80Ks and a scattering of Spectrums.
None of them could match the keyboard on my TI-99/4a.
Perfect size keyboard for my hands at the time.
That'd be the ZX Spectrum rubber keyboard then and sad to say it probably does beat some keyboards I've used lately.
(Has that Bluetooth keyboard by Elite that I remember reading about come out yet? I'd check the website but some killjoy's put their address in the damn proxy.)
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
