The link is great – thanks for sharing!
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(The current speculation is that someone reassembled the keyboard wrongly with zero on the wrong side. Curious if there are other options.)
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That’s not, ahem, typical. They could have hooked a routine into the KSW switch at $38 and $39 on zero page to translate, or rewired the kbd
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But the keyboard encoder chip was far too crude to handle remapping the keyboard if you changed the keycaps around.
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Interesting thing: the first 3000 keyboards had pc boards that extended up past the lip of the case,. That’s where the encoder chip was.
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But that made them very vulnerable to static discharge. I had to replace the encoder on mine 3 or 4 times in 1977. There was another problem
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that if you lifted the lid up carelessly, you would pry the keyboard right off its screw mounts and pull them out of the case. Oopsie.
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Only a few thousand people remember that. It was one of the first major design fixes, the keyboard that shielded the encoder and didn’t jut.
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Thanks for the picture! Where was it taken?
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Replying to @cdespinosa
It’s here! https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apple_II_IMG_4214.jpg … Apparently taken at a Swiss museum.
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Thanks for sharing all of these details! I’m currently writing a book about (typewriter/computer) keyboards, so this is amazing.
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Replying to @mwichary @cdespinosa
(There are some regional keyboards, e.g. in Hungary, that have a 0 on the left, but something tells me that Apple II is not Hungarian. :·) )
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Replying to @mwichary @cdespinosa
Do you have a favourite keyboard? (Apple or otherwise?)
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