Interesting terminal keyboard

[quantalume]

Any idea what terminal this came from?

$_57.JPG (113.39 KiB) Viewed 4758 times

The price is right. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Termina ... 3ce1018042

[Muirium]

Note the Helvetica legends (on sphericals!) and the narrow function keys. It's an HP, from one of their late 70s terminal systems. I've actually seen and typed on the integrated version of this (built into the terminal and CRT housing), and it's linear. Naturally! I'll see if I can dig out the number…

A quick forum search refreshes my memory. The one I tried was more like this:

http://deskthority.net/post130275.html#p130275

Strong family resemblance though.

[Findecanor]

It's an HP, from one of their late 70s terminal systems. I've actually seen and typed on the integrated version of this (built into the terminal and CRT housing), and it's linear.

Yes. That keyboard had been integrated into the HP 9826A.
I have owned one, with Swedish layout. I think it had Cherry M11 switches, Very bad key feel... but very thick keycaps.

Apparently, a detachable keyboard had been available for this computer. Might be it.

[Muirium]

Collector's Notes:

The museum has found 9826s to be very reliable. 85 percent of units we see are fully functional, although broken keys are not uncommon.

This well be those early Cherry switches being a poor design, but from what I saw in a museum warehouse, all these massive terminals tend to win up at the bottom of a stack of other stuff, and no keyboard likes much of that.

[lowpoly]

I remember having seen an HP 9826A when we made a school trip to a local lab in the early eighties. It looked sooo nice. I still like it today. They used BASIC on it IIRC. The wheel in the upper left was for scrolling.

[legalize]

There are many similarities here with the keyboards for the HP 264x graphics terminals such as the HP 2648A. However, those keyboards use a hall effect switch mechanism. No clicky noises from the switch activation because it's all done with magnets

[Hak Foo]

I remember having seen an HP 9826A when we made a school trip to a local lab in the early eighties. It looked sooo nice. I still like it today. They used BASIC on it IIRC. The wheel in the upper left was for scrolling.

Some years ago, I scrapped a 9836, which I think was the bigger brother. It had a chassis which looked roughly like an Apple III, but with two floppies in front. It came with a monitor that could latch to the base unit, but was fully detachable.

While the series offered a ROM BASIC, it was not an assured feature; the 9836 I got lacked it. I seem to recall it featured a few "fully internal" cards, and then some cards that mounted to a riser that could be added or removed without opening the case.