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From: grr@cbmvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Comments on the A2000
Message-ID: <1495@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 5-Mar-87 03:09:11 EST
Article-I.D.: cbmvax.1495
Posted: Thu Mar  5 03:09:11 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Mar-87 03:11:37 EST
References: <2677@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: grr@cbmvax.UUCP (George Robbins)
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 45

In article <2677@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> mwm@violet.berkeley.edu(Mike Meyer) writes:
>
>1) That keyboard: YUCH! Got half the problems of the vt200/ISO (I
>think it's an ISO standard, anyway) keyboard, without managing to
>follow that standard. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it:
>a keyboard that even people who like the vt200 keyboard would hate.

You're making me feel bad...  Perhaps some day you'll get to try to get
more than one people to agree on what is a "good" layout...

Anyway, the idea was to come up with a standard layout that we could use
on both the A500 and A2000, in both US and International versions. We
had an uncontrollable desire to "fix" the contra-ergonomic diamond shaped
cursor arrangement and no need/desire for a compressed layout.

Other concerns were having enough keys to emulate various popular terminals
including providing a keypad suitible for use with DEC VMS (yeech) keypad
editors.  The actual design is really a combination of VT52 (my favorite),
VT100, VT240 and C.Itoh 101e layouts and a lot of "where the hell do we
put these !@#$%^&*() sqiggle and backslash keys".  We also needed two 
optional postitions for "euro-keys" which get chipped out of the left-shit
and return keys.

In some ways result came out looking disturbingly like the ST keyboard, however
we refrained from scrambling the "calculator" keys on the keypad just for the
sake of being different...

>Looks like the pencil-holder is gone, too.

Oh, is that what that was for? 

> And it's not plug-compatable with the A1000 keyboard so I could keep using
> that on one.

Well, not plug compatible, but it is electrically compatible so if you really
want to use your old keyboard, all you gotta do is go to Radio-shack and get
the parts for a little adapter

Also, remember that the whole works is reprogrammable through a keymap, so
if you want to switch squiggle and escape or backspace and delete, there's
nothing to stop you, and all well behaved software will obey your will.
-- 
George Robbins - now working for,	uucp: {ihnp4|seismo|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr
but no way officially representing	arpa: cbmvax!grr@seismo.css.GOV
Commodore, Engineering Department	fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)