Questions tagged [keyboards]
For questions about the maintenance, usage, or history of retro keyboards.
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How did ALT + F4 become the shortcut for closing?
This is another in a long line of computer history trivia questions. It is very much related to this question.
How did Alt + F4 become the close keyboard shortcut? I always used that close command on ...
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Did any MS-DOS program ever use the System Request interrupt?
As I remember, the SysRq key generated a special, unique interrupt (not an ordinary keyboard interrupt). It was supposed to let the user interrupt any process in a multitasking situation and return ...
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What is the keyboard combination for turbo on Prolinea 3/25?
I have a Compaq Prolinea 3/25zs (BIOS 08/03/92 386C)and suspect it can be switched between 25 MHz and some lower speed. There's a BIOS setting for System Power-on Speed, "Auto" or "High&...
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Toshiba Libretto 100CT PS/2 keyboard and mouse dual use
I have a Toshiba Libretto 100CT that I'd like to use in docked configuration with an external monitor, speakers, keyboard and mouse
Through the use of the official dock I'm able to use a VGA port for ...
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How was the @ sign added to keyboards and character sets?
Today, you need the @ character in many places, most notably in email addresses, but I suspect that when the syntax for an email address was defined, the sign was already supported in character sets ...
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Why do BK computers have unusual representations of $ and ^
While programming in BASIC and FOCAL on my BK-0010-01, I wonder why both the keyboard and the character set have unusual representations of ASCII 36 and ASCII 94?
ASCII 36: Standard:$ ; BK version: ¤
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What are these keys on the БК-0010-series keyboards, and what do they do?
(Picture taken from Wkipedia)
The БК-0011M keyboard has these keys across the top row:
ПОВТ (perhaps short for Повтор, which means Repetition; perhaps used for key repeat)
КТ
Three arrows which look ...
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What did Ctrl+NumLock do?
In my answer here I infer that the unusual scancode for the Pause/Break key emulates the user pressing and then releasing CtrlNumLock. Obviously that key combination did something specific, back when ...
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Were there clones and/or national variants of IBM's 84-key AT keyboard?
The 84-Key IBM AT keyboard (the one with a visibly separated numbers block but without dedicated cursor keys, with ESC and a dedicated SysRq key in the numbers block) seems to be the rarest of the old ...
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How can I prevent unwanted key repeat when using PS/2 keyboard with USB adapter?
I'm currently using an IBM Model M keyboard with a PS/2-to-USB active adapter. When I type fast on my main PC, almost any key will get "stuck" and keeps repeating until I press another key.
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Was there a keyboard layout starting with "TBSY"?
Watching an episode of Murder, She Wrote (7x12 "Suspicion of Murder") and, at one point, a character picks up a typewriter and throws it through a window.
However, said keyboard has the ...
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What was the first backlit keyboard and were the shift characters illuminated?
I recently bought a Logitech G915 TKL Keyboard. https://www.logitech.com/assets/65840/g915-lightspeed-wireless-rgb-mechanical-gaming-keyboard-qsg.pdf
It's great but a massive disadvantage is that ...
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CONIN (Console In) in CP/M and "old characters" in character latch
CP/M uses CONIN to read a single character from the keyboard, and it will assert CONST to poll the status register for incoming characters. Let's assume the keyboard controller can buffer one ...
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Why is Ctrl-V the Paste shortcut?
We now casually use the Ctrl-C to Copy.
We also use Ctrl-X to Cut. I understand this choice. We cannot reuse Ctrl-C and the 'X' represents a cross. Crossing something out on a sheet of paper was ...
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Why was the "Space-cadet keyboard" called that?
Many of us have heard of the so-called "Space-cadet keyboard" from 1978 (famous for including a mind-boggling number of modifier keys including control, meta, hyper, super, shift, top, front,...
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