>From Scott Courtney:
>>>>>>>>>>>>
On Wednesday 05 December 2001 06:27 pm, David Boyes wrote:
>
> I've used the actual lead-slug-producing kind. They're fun. Loud, clanky
> machinery, a bazillion motors moving rods and gears, molten metal, plus
> cryptic commands and having to type like you're raising a ten pound
> weight with your fingers all in one lovely device. It's a device that
> only an engineer could love, and it's a beauty in a gross
> electro-mechanical sense...
I always felt that way about the IBM 029 keypunch machine. We had hundreds
of
those on our university campus (Univ. of Missouri -- Columbia). Not that I
was
sorry to move to the "new" 3270 terminals when they arrived, though. <grin>
<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Yes, but the key-click (actually key-thunk) mechanism sounded like
it was implemented using an over-sized solenoid. I don't recall
any means of adjusting the loadness, either.
Ka-Chunk! Ka-Chunk!
Oh, well, it slowed down the keystrokes to the 10 CPS level the
controller liked...
I did a fair amount of time on the Sperry-UNIVAC "Uniscope"
terminals, too. The UTS-200 was interesting- the keyboard
_looked_ like a chiclet style unit on steroids and was nowhere
near as positive as the 3277 and it's brethren. The UTS-400
had an ability to set the volume of the keyclick, but I was
kind of annoying with it. The thing I found MOST reasonable on
those terminals, though, was that they placed the arrow keys
where God meant them to be placed- at the left side of the
keyboard! After all, left-handed folks (like me!) are more
comfortable with this arrangement... :-) :-) :-)
Sun's keyboards, however, have me looking for razor blades so
I can slit my wrists. I can (barely) remember a time when they
weren't so uncomfortable. There was a time that key arrangement
was more "standard", but, like so many things, it's become a
rite of passage for the religious folks around Sun these days.
(We have a Solaris expert; We refer to him as "Ra, the Sun
deity" because problems that perplex us AIX and Linux geeks
don't faze him at all.)
Yes, we've had religious wars over Editors (xedit|vi|emacs)
I'm sure that a keyboard battle is only a matter of time-
until PDAs can handle handwriting like the Newton... (My son
is a Mac expert. It took a while but he poisoned my mind when
I got to play with a Newton. Now I have my own MP130.)
--------------------
John R. Campbell, Speaker to Machines (GNUrd) {813-801|427}-7310
"Will Work for CLAIM Codes"
IBM Certified: IBM AIX 4.3 System Administration, System Support
