Thanks for clearing up the mystery.
Kurt
On 9/11/2015 5:57 PM, Jan-80 wrote:
Hello USAmericans, welcome to the rest of the world, where people do
not do everything the same as in the USA. (eg, I have free healthcare)
All over the world, QWERTY layouts are adapted to suit the languages
the keyboard is used for. Maybe you are not aware that there are
accented characters, but a lot of languages do use more than the 26
letters of the alphabet. Sometimes, that adaptation goes even further.
Like someone pointed to the Wikipedia-article, AZERTY is the
Euro-French standard for keyboard layout. And it's much more than
switching A, Z, Q and W around. You should also notice that the
numbers 1, 2, ... 9, 0 are upper case characters. And there are some
keys that sport different tokens, like ç or à. And some keys have 3
characters, one shifted, the other ALTGR-ed. The AltGr-key being
different from the Alt-key. A QWERTY has 2 Alt keys, and AZERTY only
has one. And there are the dead keys: strike ^ and 'a', and you get
the letter â on your screen.
Now this is all very nice for french-speaking/writing people, but
virtually unnecessary for Dutch-speaking peple, from The Netherlands
and from Flanders. (like I am) We have virtually no accented
characters, except for the combination ë. In The Netherlands, they
have a slight variation on the QWERTY layout, while the Flemish in
Belgium are stuck with AZERTY-Be, rendering all computers more expensive.
Anyway, In order to be accepted as a professional computer company,
Tandy, in the 1980's, had to supply AZERTY keyboards for all the
computers they sold as 'professional'. There was a version of the
TRS-80 model III, 4, II, 16, 12, 6000 with AZERTY keyboards, but not
for the CoCo. The Model 100 got a keycaps set (complete replacement
for ALL the keys) and a driver ROM. Because, you have to modify the
behaviour of the keyboard/screen combination, specifically because of
the dead keys. There are different ways of doing that, but generally
it's with an extra piece of software, a driver. The driver of the
Model T came on a ROM-chip, and you had to activate it, and then you
had AZERTY on your model T too.
Anyway, apart from a driver (DOS or Window) or a memory-resident piece
of software (Tandy Model 100) there is also the possibility of driving
the keyboard in ROM. Like it was done on the TRS-80 model III/4 in
cassette-version, or the adapted versions of the Olivetti M-10, that
came with an AZERTY, QWERTZU or UK-QWERTY keyboard.
Personally, I never used AZERTY on my TRS-80 and Tandy computers,
unless they came with it (T1000+PCs) I stuck, for the Model 100 also,
with the default QWERTY, because of the fact that most program makers
(US) didn't take the alternative keyboards into account, creating a
lot of compatibility errors. I'm not going into those compatibility
problems caused by un-knowing programmers - unless you want me to -
but suffice to say that I knew that, and I was used to a QWERTY layout
anyway because my first computers was a Model I, so I didn't bother to
switch.
Maybe that's the reason why the Model 100 ROM/Character table got
'cleaned up' when it was exported to Europe. Because they had to use
and display all those accented characters, I would have been very
unprofessional if they didn't align right (like in the original
character set) or didn't contain all the necessary characters (like
PI...)
That was the european view. ;-)
Greetings from te TyRannoSaurus
Jan-80
On Fri, 11 Sep 2015 16:20:42 -0700, Ken Pettit wrote:
Looks like the Q, W, A and Z keys came off and someone simply didn't
pay any attention when popping them back on. If you look at the
picture on the original box, it appears to be a standard QWERTY
keyboard depicted.
Ken
On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 3:51 PM, Lee Kelley <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
It's not /Dvorak which is what I checked out being that I don't
parlyvu fransay. lol
/
/On an other note if you set up a computer for //Dvorak and then
remote controle into it from a computer that is not set for
//Dvorak it can be pretty confusing when you forget about it....
/
On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 4:48 PM, Mike Stein <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
AKA AZERTY
----- Original Message -----
*From:* Geoffrey Oltmans <mailto:[email protected]>
*To:* Model 100 Discussion <mailto:[email protected]>
*Sent:* Friday, September 11, 2015 2:55 PM
*Subject:* Re: [M100] Keyboard Layout
Looks like just a standard French keyboard layout.
On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 1:12 PM, Kurt McCullum
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Saw this 102 today and other than being a French
version, I noticed the keyboard layout was like
nothing I had ever seen before. Is anybody familiar
with this arrangement of keys?
Ordinateur TANDY 102 avec boite BOXED computer
<http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ordinateur-TANDY-102-avec-boite-BOXED-computer-/231683657494?hash=item35f16c0f16>
image
<http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ordinateur-TANDY-102-avec-boite-BOXED-computer-/231683657494?hash=item35f16c0f16>
1
Ordinateur TANDY 102 avec boite BOXED computer
<http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ordinateur-TANDY-102-avec-boite-BOXED-computer-/231683657494?hash=item35f16c0f16>
US $67.34 Seller refurbished in Computers/Tablets &
Networking, Vintage Computing, Other Vintage Computing
View on www.ebay.com
<http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ordinateur-TANDY-102-avec-boite-BOXED-computer-/231683657494?hash=item35f16c0f16>
Preview by Yahoo
Kurt
--
/"I will never in my lifetime make a film that cannot be seen by
the whole family"/ Arther P. Jacobs
