LGR - Experiencing The IBM PCjr Chiclet Keyboard
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Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 10
raydeen2k
We had a combo of Tandy clones and PCjr's in my high school computer class. The classic prank was to wait until the person sitting directly in front of you was distracted whilst eyeballing their code print out. During those brief seconds, you'd raise your keyboard up and aim it at their machine and just blast random characters into their code. Or if you were really clever and a good typist, you'd imbed some 'easter eggs' into their code that they wouldn't notice until they ran their program. ;)
The chiclet keyboard was probably cheaper to produce so it was probably seen as a money saving compromise for a system that just didn't take off like IBM thought it would.
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We had a combo of Tandy clones and PCjr's in my high school computer class. The classic prank was to wait until the person sitting directly in front of you was distracted whilst eyeballing their code print out. During those brief seconds, you'd raise your keyboard up and aim it at their machine and just blast random characters into their code. Or if you were really clever and a good typist, you'd imbed some 'easter eggs' into their code that they wouldn't notice until they ran their program. ;)
The chiclet keyboard was probably cheaper to produce so it was probably seen as a money saving compromise for a system that just didn't take off like IBM thought it would.
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Defosh369
Seriously, how needs modern day keyboard technology; P
I just exchanged my black, compact keyboard and got my hands on a old keyboard. Which will be my new keyboard from now on. My God is it satisfying to use and type stuff. It's massive, it's clunky, feels almost indestructible, buttons are huge and they got this nice -click- to them.
Sure enough, buttons have this classic white and grey look, and I'd had to use an additional adapter to actually connect it to my PS/2 port. It is great though.
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Seriously, how needs modern day keyboard technology; P
I just exchanged my black, compact keyboard and got my hands on a old keyboard. Which will be my new keyboard from now on. My God is it satisfying to use and type stuff. It's massive, it's clunky, feels almost indestructible, buttons are huge and they got this nice -click- to them.
Sure enough, buttons have this classic white and grey look, and I'd had to use an additional adapter to actually connect it to my PS/2 port. It is great though.
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LGR
-mbbrutman At a technical level they're the same, quite correct. But that's one of the biggest things that can possibly matter with a keyboard, and while it's not completely unusable it's just impressively awkward until you're used to it.
I do like how it was a forerunner of the FN key. What's awful is, from a gamer's standpoint, games that use F1-10 for common controls. The FN key is no good then.
And of course, I'm stating this for the benefit of others not necessarily you, Master Brutman: D
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-mbbrutman At a technical level they're the same, quite correct. But that's one of the biggest things that can possibly matter with a keyboard, and while it's not completely unusable it's just impressively awkward until you're used to it.
I do like how it was a forerunner of the FN key. What's awful is, from a gamer's standpoint, games that use F1-10 for common controls. The FN key is no good then.
And of course, I'm stating this for the benefit of others not necessarily you, Master Brutman: D
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VWestlife
Is it beeping because it thinks you're pressing too many keys at the same time? Because touch typists do not completely release one key before pressing the next, normal PC keyboards allow -rollover-, which accomodates this overlap and keeps track of which order the keys were pressed. But since the PCjr -chiclet- keyboard was not designed for touch typing, maybe it does not allow rollover. An electronic key click (like Atari computers) would help a lot, too. -
p. s. Acorn Electron review soon?
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Is it beeping because it thinks you're pressing too many keys at the same time? Because touch typists do not completely release one key before pressing the next, normal PC keyboards allow -rollover-, which accomodates this overlap and keeps track of which order the keys were pressed. But since the PCjr -chiclet- keyboard was not designed for touch typing, maybe it does not allow rollover. An electronic key click (like Atari computers) would help a lot, too. -
p. s. Acorn Electron review soon?
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mbbrutman
From a technical standpoint, the first and second revision keyboards are identical - the key travel, spacing, resistance, etc. are the same. All that changed was the shape of the keys.
When you consider the trickery that went into the BIOS programming to allow the machine to emulate the original PC keyboard at the BIOS level with 21 less keys, it is a wonderful achievement. Today you can find netbooks using the same 'FN' key trick that the PCjr pioneered 28 years ago. That's not so bad.
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From a technical standpoint, the first and second revision keyboards are identical - the key travel, spacing, resistance, etc. are the same. All that changed was the shape of the keys.
When you consider the trickery that went into the BIOS programming to allow the machine to emulate the original PC keyboard at the BIOS level with 21 less keys, it is a wonderful achievement. Today you can find netbooks using the same 'FN' key trick that the PCjr pioneered 28 years ago. That's not so bad.
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Lachlant1984
Bluetooth keyboards have the advantage that they must be paired with a host device to prevent the kind of scenarios and problems you demonstrated in this video, of course Bluetooth technology wasn't even around in the 80's. My iMac came with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, but I don't use them for one of the same reasons you don't like the PC Jr keyboards, they use batteries that I don't want to replace all the time, so I'm just using the standard Apple USB keyboard and mouse.
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Bluetooth keyboards have the advantage that they must be paired with a host device to prevent the kind of scenarios and problems you demonstrated in this video, of course Bluetooth technology wasn't even around in the 80's. My iMac came with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, but I don't use them for one of the same reasons you don't like the PC Jr keyboards, they use batteries that I don't want to replace all the time, so I'm just using the standard Apple USB keyboard and mouse.
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LGR
-xargos This isn't a standard key layout, so it makes it more of a pain than it should be. Even once you figure that out, you will never want to get used to touch typing because of the way the keys work (or rather, don't work.
I am well aware of non-marked keyboards to teach touch typing. I'm a touch typer myself. It's fine on a keyboard that has keys that allow for touch typing, but try one of these and you'll see why this makes unmarked keys an even bigger issue.
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-xargos This isn't a standard key layout, so it makes it more of a pain than it should be. Even once you figure that out, you will never want to get used to touch typing because of the way the keys work (or rather, don't work.
I am well aware of non-marked keyboards to teach touch typing. I'm a touch typer myself. It's fine on a keyboard that has keys that allow for touch typing, but try one of these and you'll see why this makes unmarked keys an even bigger issue.
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LGR
-UKRetroGames Yes, I very dared and I very well may not have been fair about it but hey. It's the only other -chilet-style- keyboard I own so it gets compared! :P
Oh and the Elk not having dedicated function keys I can deal with, since I've not really run across anything that uses them for regular buttons, like firing in games. The PC used the function keys extensively because of how they were laid out on the keyboard on the far left, and the jr suffers due to that.
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-UKRetroGames Yes, I very dared and I very well may not have been fair about it but hey. It's the only other -chilet-style- keyboard I own so it gets compared! :P
Oh and the Elk not having dedicated function keys I can deal with, since I've not really run across anything that uses them for regular buttons, like firing in games. The PC used the function keys extensively because of how they were laid out on the keyboard on the far left, and the jr suffers due to that.
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Hardtsonfire
It's good this, you're making my complaints about infuriating old crap seem relevant. Hah but you know - I never even knew what the 'home keys' where - just looked down at my keyboard and discovered little knobs on F and J. Well what do you know.
I never even knew we had IR keyboards once - I imagine the nerds worst night mare (the sun) is going to be even worse once it shines directly on your pc and starts communicating.
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It's good this, you're making my complaints about infuriating old crap seem relevant. Hah but you know - I never even knew what the 'home keys' where - just looked down at my keyboard and discovered little knobs on F and J. Well what do you know.
I never even knew we had IR keyboards once - I imagine the nerds worst night mare (the sun) is going to be even worse once it shines directly on your pc and starts communicating.
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mbbrutman
-phreakindee No doubt - the layout is a tremendous problem. Hence my using a PC 5150 keyboard on my PCjr, which is a minor crime. Want to see evidence of a design struggle in the PCjr BIOS? Bring up the diagnostics sometime and try to figure out why they have keyboard diagnostics for both the 62 key PCjr keyboard an an 83 key PC style keyboard. Yes, that's burned into the ROMs from the factory. :-)
Keep up the good work.
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-phreakindee No doubt - the layout is a tremendous problem. Hence my using a PC 5150 keyboard on my PCjr, which is a minor crime. Want to see evidence of a design struggle in the PCjr BIOS? Bring up the diagnostics sometime and try to figure out why they have keyboard diagnostics for both the 62 key PCjr keyboard an an 83 key PC style keyboard. Yes, that's burned into the ROMs from the factory. :-)
Keep up the good work.
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