From: utzoo!decvax!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uicsovax!kline Newsgroups: net.micro Title: Re: Jerry Pournelle's Disappointment - (nf) Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.344 Posted: Fri Aug 6 07:31:15 1982 Received: Sun Aug 8 09:15:04 1982 #R:sri-unix:-226500:uicsovax:3700026:000:2143 uicsovax!kline Jul 30 08:56:00 1982 Here it is: I've got the June, 1982 issue of BYTE in front of me; page 288. ``. . .Only IBM has RUINED the keyboard! What ought to be its strongest point, the thing IBM always excelled at, is its worst mistake. What IBM did was to put extra keys between the space bar and the Shift key. Why, I don't know. The result is that when you think you've typed, say, a capital T, you get instead /t, which isn't useful at all. There is also no line-feed key; instead IBM seems to have manipulated the Carriage Return key to give both carriage return and line feed when struck. . .I suppose there's a way to filter that madness; but there's no help for the Shift key being mislocated, nor for the egregious amount of space between the home keys and the Return key. I may one day buy an IBM--but not until I get over the shock of that ruined keyboard. I've never been so disappointed in my life.'' There was no mention of the feel of the IBM PC keyboard anywhere in the column. I'm not sure what he means by "extra characters between the space bar and the Shift key;" the shift keys and the space bar are not adjacent on any keyboard I've ever seen. I think what he really means is the \ key, between the Z and the left shift key. Thus the "/t" he mentions should really be "\t", which is what you'd get from not reaching far enough for the left shift. My own personal comment, if I may: Right now I'm typing on an IBM 3101 terminal, which has the "<" key placed between the Z and the left shift, and the return key is exactly the same distance from the ";" key (and thus the rest of the home row for touch-typists) as on the IBM PC keyboard. I find the 3101 a joy to use; the keyboard has an excellent feel and none of the above complaints ever get in MY way. This opinion is shared by many of the other users here at CSO--I'll take this over a VT100 any day. I've only had a few minutes at an IBM PC, but from what I experienced, I'd be quite happy with that, too. The keyboard remains the strong point of IBM's design, despite what Jerry Pournelle says. Charley Kline decvax!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uicsovax!kline