Tektronix Keyboard

[Douglas Taylor via cctalk]

This I didn't know.

I bought a Tektronix 4207 color graphics terminal without a keyboard 
recently.  Finding the correct keyboard part number seemed to be a 
process with great uncertainty, the VintageTEK folks said the correct 
one was a 2468.  One of these was for sale on ebay for $300 - no way was 
I paying that much!

So I tried one that looked like the keyboard in the TEK catalog of that 
period, but with a different part number. The connector looked like the 
right one though.  I got one off ebay, and I thought it was kind of 
expensive, but it did work with the 4207 terminal.

What I didn't understand was a fascination with the black mechanical 
Cherry switches the keyboard used.  These turn out to be extremely 
popular with the 'gaming' community.  I don't know if the tektronix 
keyboard can be used with a modern PC, I haven't looked at the interface 
signals yet.  The modern PS/2 keyboard has a clock and data line, the 
DEC LK201 used rs232, so what Tektronix used is anybody's guess.