deskthority

Greetings wizards, I seek your understanding on a small matter; though granted this is likely just beyond your area of interest, but you may have some hunches.

Take the attached image of I suppose an IBM clone. The area in orange, reduce in size such that the upper row of keys is much closer to the main body of keys. The areas in red, remove altogether. Imagine the metal base - remove that and make the keyboard thinner such that there is no natural incline - in order to have the board raised you now use those little plastic popout legs. Keep the coiled cable but instead of a DIN connector, have a Ps2 connector albeit not purple colour coded, just the plain beige. Most importantly, maintain the same two-tone keys colour scheme we have here and maintain the same visual style of those lock LED functions, those three adjoining dark squares if you like. Just what keyboard might this be?

It's one I had about 10 years ago but then misplaced. I'm guessing it's one of those designs that came about at the turn of the century, just after manufacturers realised the average family wanted a lighter frame but before the trend became that of USB connectivity and a black colour scheme. I recall there was no logo but being a silly teen I didn't bother to note any details on the back of the board. If anyone has an inkling of a name for this design please do reply. It was the best I ever had, but despite a long internet search no matches are coming up; perhaps not surprising if the board is not old enough to be retro but way too old to be 'popular'.

Kind regards,
Mark

Obviously a Cherry G80-3000 (or perhaps G81-3000) with some sort of a Scandinavian layout.

This was the standard for many years, by the way.

Ah those are getting warmer, although not quite there. With both of those you still have the DIN connector and both are still quite large. Did they potentially make a smaller version with ps2 connection?

There's quite a few keyboards that fit that description. Any recollection about the switches?

Alas no recollection there, although you didn't hear much click from them. That third keyboard you've pictured is pretty much there in terms of reduced size and litte gap between the top row of keys and the rest. And indeed the example picture I used was a poor one in that the key arrangement wasn't like that; it was in fact like the ones in your pictures with tilde in the corner, slash and asterisk next to Num Lock etc.
I may find it yet!

Top two are Big Ass Enter. Was yours? How could you forget a key like dat?

kbdfr wrote: 16 Jul 2022, 09:32 Obviously a Cherry G80-3000 (or perhaps G81-3000) with some sort of a Scandinavian layout.

This was the standard for many years, by the way.

Pretty sure it's a Cherry G80-1000 (Or G81-1000) with Swedish doubleshot keycaps. The pictured keyboard, not the described keyboard.

I'm scrambling my brains as to whether it was a backwards L key or a 'JIS' style, but definitely covered two rows yes. Sorry I guess that makes the matching worse!
Attached is the only distant picture I can find of the board which is from a terrible video recording. At least it gives some idea of the small size of the thing; that monitor next to it is only a 15" (1024x768).

Yes I was on a budget!

If you’re American: it’ll be Big Ass. This one:



If you’re not, it’ll be ISO:



I’m just guessing you’re not Japanese. JIS and ISO use the same Return key shape, but JIS is only used in Japan. ISO is global.

My bad there; yes a Brit here so assuming the keyboard didn't come to the UK secondhand (very unlikely in this case) then ISO.

There were quite a few Big Ass Enter keyboards over here actually. A friend of mine has a mad clicky Monterey board that otherwise fits your description, but for a beige DIN AT jack and bringing Teh Noize. It has BAE, and dubious legend printing!



The switches are nice enough: blue SMK aka “Montereys.” Very crispy. Sounds like MX blue but feels much sharper.

ISO is seldom seen in America however. Especially by the late 90s.