deskthority

This old Russian Elektronika DVK-2M keyboard from 1989 has the coolest direction pad I have ever seen.



In addition to the usual up, down, left, right, there is also up and slightly left, around the corner to the left, down dot, down-left and away, a couple of double-line down and up keys... Does anyone know the purpose of these awesome keys?

It's currently for sale on eBay.

And it’s in Kyiv…

The direction pad presumably has home, end and page up/down functions but even those don’t cover the beast. What a character!

I actually have something a little like that (mapped onto a function layer) for my mouse keys: diagonals as well as cardinal directions, plus additive effect when pressing several at a time to really make that pointer move. No fancy legends on the keys though. I hide it in the alpha block so I even have it on my daily driver 60s.

Hmmm not sure if you can top the iconic Space Cadet and its pointing icons:



And if we are just talking arrows—not that I think these are "better" than that Elektronika, I just like them—then I'd like to bring up these couple examples...

This Robotron has a whopping 14 legends that include some sort of arrow icon:



I love the front printing on this Nixdorf cluster:



And lastly, I forgot where I took this screenshot from, but I love the use of the double harpoon unicode arrows... it's kind of a funky layout as it's basically an arrow cluster sitting right on top of another arrow cluster haha:

I see your handsome Robotron icon mods and raise the delightful Granite set by Matt3o:



Here they are in action:



I still reckon these are among the best legends of all time. Matteo's design skills (and my extensive hectoring ) turned out quite a classic. The icon mods are where it's at for me, and the generous selection of pixel art for highlights is a nice touch. I've a lot more of it than fits on any one keyboard.

Ironically, Granite's default arrow keys are among its weaker glyphs. Arrows should be →. But yes, there's definitely scope for more ⇨ than ← on our crazier keys.

Re: the arrow cluster above an arrow cluster, I did actually try this for mouse movement for a while myself. Didn't stick! But I do have two rows of text cursor movement and selection macros (on a function layer on the alpha block) which are arranged much like that: movement macros above and selection macros directly under their equivalents. Works a treat for me, even on my little HHKB. Just needs some matching pretty legends for me to ignore, I suppose.

MathematicalJ wrote: ↑

13 Apr 2023, 04:53

This old Russian Elektronika DVK-2M keyboard from 1989 has the coolest direction pad I have ever seen.



In addition to the usual up, down, left, right, there is also up and slightly left, around the corner to the left, down dot, down-left and away, a couple of double-line down and up keys... Does anyone know the purpose of these awesome keys?

It's currently for sale on eBay.

Really cool board. I love the big modifier in the bottom corners for switching between latin and cyrillic characters

Whoever bought it should definitely post some more in-detail pictures!

The Apollo / Domain workstations, later sold by HP, had their own unique direction pad.
Located on the left side of the keyboard, they sported not only different arrows, but also beside others dedicated Cut/Copy and Undo/Paste keys.

If someone could sell me one for a good price or point me to a vendor... used one of them during my time at the university, and loved it. I'm living in Germany, Europe.


I found the image on Twitter

Looking through the history of Apollo, it seems they had a fable for funky features on their boards (like that one with the integrated touchpad ...).

What switches are in this one?

TNT wrote: ↑

02 May 2023, 13:07

What switches are in this one?

I don't actually know, but Elektronika tended to use magnetic reed switches.

The computer it came with looks pretty badass:

Now that's a proper machine, straight out of one of Lem's stories or something

Lem? For phantomatics or intellectronics? Either one may be a tad on the slow side.

Muirium wrote: ↑

08 May 2023, 17:19

Lem? For phantomatics or intellectronics? Either one may be a tad on the slow side.

If you haven't seen it the original Solaris is excellent,much better than the Clooney version.

They're also making a game based on 'The Invincible'. Looks promising, there's a demo on Steam if you wanna try.