Tektronix UTek Spanish layout ALPS Green - What to do?

tektronixkeyboard

12 Jan 2021, 07:58

I thought to post my first note regarding this keyboard, which is neat and I've had for a long time, but am wondering what to do with it. I bought it from the Tektronix Surplus Store around 1988 after they scrapped their UNIX workstation line of products. It's a Spanish layout with ALPS Green keyswitches and judging by the low serial number, probably not a lot of these exist.

I grabbed it cheaply back in the day, played around a bit with it, opened it up in the 80s when I got it new to take a look inside, and then lost a few of the exterior screws when I put it back together, assuming it was going to be a parts donor of some kind. Oops. It's not in perfect condition but it's been kept in a dry, warm indoor location for all of its life and not full of food crumbs or hair from use.

It's a Tektronix 119-2696-03 (Spanish keyboard layout) and fun to see that it has no @ symbol on any of the keycaps. Of course we don't need that symbol in UTek UNIX! :-)

My question is - what should I do with this thing? Maybe I should be posting in the Swap marketplace section instead?

Pictures speak more than words - here are a few:
tek1.jpeg
tek1.jpeg (492.25 KiB) Viewed 1054 times
tek2.jpeg
tek2.jpeg (481.93 KiB) Viewed 1054 times
tek3.jpeg
tek3.jpeg (452.56 KiB) Viewed 1054 times
tek4-part119-2696-03.jpeg
tek4-part119-2696-03.jpeg (267.35 KiB) Viewed 1054 times
tek5-alps-green.jpeg
tek5-alps-green.jpeg (207.48 KiB) Viewed 1054 times

User avatar
//gainsborough
ALPSの日常

12 Jan 2021, 08:02

I'll buy it. I'm just south of you in Albany as well!

User avatar
depletedvespene

12 Jan 2021, 13:45

tektronixkeyboard wrote:
12 Jan 2021, 07:58

It's a Tektronix 119-2696-03 (Spanish keyboard layout) and fun to see that it has no @ symbol on any of the keycaps. Of course we don't need that symbol in UTek UNIX! :-)
The layout is a close copy(*) of the common Spanish (Spain) layout, which places a few symbols in the tertiary layer and seem to not be printed here. You'll surely find that \, | and ¬, plus the brackets and the braces, are also missing.

(*) Besides the above, the only differences are the presence of # in Shift-3 (instead of AltGr-3), in detriment of the · symbol, and the overloading of the Ç key to produce the ~ symbol.

tektronixkeyboard wrote:
12 Jan 2021, 07:58
My question is - what should I do with this thing? Maybe I should be posting in the Swap marketplace section instead?
For starters, swap the ºª and ¿¡ keycaps, which are in each other's places. :mrgreen:

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