deskthority

This will be only of marginal interest to most folk. This is an unremarkable Fujitsu ICL rubber dome keyboard, apart from the keycaps. I worked for British Gas Research and Development at their site in Loughborough as a contract software engineer https://lakesdev.blogspot.com/2013/04/g ... bered.html between around 1995 and 1998 and they were a big DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) user, including their office automation product ALL-IN-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALL-IN-1. ALL-IN-1 was terminal based, so after the transition from dumb terminals to PCs access was via emulation software. The problem with this is that ALL-IN-1 relied on a number of shortcuts. So it looks like British Gas placed a special order for Fujitsu ICL PCs with keyboards containing the custom key set. These keyboards are standard PC as far as I can tell, PS/2 interface.

I had a lazy eBay search on years ago for one of these, but I never expected any to turn up. After a few years pretty much out of the custom keyboard scene I had a casual search a few days ago and one was up for sale, brand new. The part number clearly contains the letters BGAS - can't be anything other than a British Gas special order!

Unfortunately whilst I was there they were transitioning to Lotus Notes (I don't recall anyone having a good word to say about it) and I believe British Gas were one of the last companies to transition away from the VAX or DEC Alpha hosted software.

Bloody hell. It might only be a rubber dome, but it's an awfully beautiful one! Congrats on getting one, especially with all that sentimental value

Do you have a link to the eBay listing? I had a look and couldn't find it. Even if they only had the one available, I'd like to keep my eyes peeled for another one

Glad you like it. It is genuinely brand new which made is so much more desirable in my eyes.

Of course my wife didn't see the point, but the folk at my DEC Legacy event will appreciate it from a DEC perspective.

This was the listing: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/363831557051

Very nice! Quite a lot of functions. Is there a significance between the red and green colors?

Incredible legends on that bad boy, nice find for sure

thefarside wrote: ↑

22 May 2022, 05:09

Very nice! Quite a lot of functions. Is there a significance between the red and green colors?

The red/green legends are colour coded based on Shift/Alt modifiers.
The orange legends indicate 'Gold key' shortcuts - you press the Gold key (PF1/Num Lock), release, then press the orange legend key.