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geekhack Marketplace => Great Finds => Topic started by: rdjack21 on Thu, 06 August 2009, 15:17:05

Title: Vintage Used Sperry Univac UTS 400 Monitor & Keyboard
Post by: rdjack21 on Thu, 06 August 2009, 15:17:05
Just check out the keyboard on this baby. If the shipping was not so high I just have to bid on this for the keyboard.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-Used-Sperry-Univac-UTS-400-Monitor-Keyboard_W0QQitemZ310159030661QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item4836eb3985&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

(http://i.ebayimg.com/08/%21B%28jYIEQ%21Wk%7E$%28KGrHgoOKiIEjlLmWN%28BBKc3GqVK6Q%7E%7E_3.JPG)
Title: Vintage Used Sperry Univac UTS 400 Monitor & Keyboard
Post by: timw4mail on Thu, 06 August 2009, 15:51:06
As cool as it would be to get that, how could you use it?

Not to mention, it probably has linear switches.
Title: Vintage Used Sperry Univac UTS 400 Monitor & Keyboard
Post by: ch_123 on Thu, 06 August 2009, 15:55:40
Yeah, looks quite similar to the old DEC VT-100 keyboard I found. Everything back then had lightweight linears. If you exclude typewriters, IBM's buckling spring keyboards were probably the first tactile switches to show up.
Title: Vintage Used Sperry Univac UTS 400 Monitor & Keyboard
Post by: rdjack21 on Thu, 06 August 2009, 15:58:37
All I really want is the keys them self. Then I would just have to figure out how to mount them on a modern switch. I just love those old cupped keys. I keep looking for a set. I almost got a set from a old VT-100 but just missed it.
Title: Vintage Used Sperry Univac UTS 400 Monitor & Keyboard
Post by: itlnstln on Thu, 06 August 2009, 16:05:47
Quote from: rdjack21;107620
All I really want is the keys them self. Then I would just have to figure out how to mount them on a modern switch. I just love those old cupped keys. I keep looking for a set. I almost got a set from a old VT-100 but just missed it.

I have always like that industral, all-caps look of the old keycaps.
Title: Vintage Used Sperry Univac UTS 400 Monitor & Keyboard
Post by: ch_123 on Thu, 06 August 2009, 17:55:46
I think there's some element of truth in that - the old VT100 board's keys don't go down properly if you press down at the sides.
Title: Vintage Used Sperry Univac UTS 400 Monitor & Keyboard
Post by: rdjack21 on Thu, 06 August 2009, 21:51:16
Quote from: webwit;107677
I bet cupped keys are another urban legend. I think they were cupped to force the user to hit the keys dead center. And when that was no longer necessary, they were replaced by flatter keycaps which are actual superior in terms of speed and comfort.

It has been so long since I have put my fingers on that type of key all I can remember is that the keys just felt good. Not the switch but the keys. But seeing as how long ago that was you may be right but I still would like to try them again and see how I like them today.
Title: Vintage Used Sperry Univac UTS 400 Monitor & Keyboard
Post by: rdjack21 on Thu, 06 August 2009, 21:53:44
Quote from: ripster;107696
It's just a vestige of the typewriters.  Probably had a lot more tooling available for this style of key back then.

Show Image
(http://geekhack.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=2527&stc=1&d=1243479951)

That is what I'm looking for. I seem to remember seeing some on an old Alps board don't remember which one though. I keep hoping that I can find those then maybe I will not have to modify them as much to make them fit on a current switch.
Title: Vintage Used Sperry Univac UTS 400 Monitor & Keyboard
Post by: lowpoly on Fri, 07 August 2009, 15:04:18
My cupped Symbolics keys can be pressed anywhere, no difference. Maybe the cupped design was the successor of the old round typewriter keys, glass with a metal edge. Those are kind of cupped as well.

The first UNIVAC 'board is from a 1610/1710 cardpunch (http://www.cs.unc.edu/~yakowenk/classiccmp/univac/):

(http://www.cs.unc.edu/~yakowenk/classiccmp/univac/Univac1610a.jpg)

Here's a UNIVAC II control panel:

(http://offthebroiler.files.wordpress.com/2006/05/univac1.jpg)

So that's what inspired the C64. :suspicious:
Title: Vintage Used Sperry Univac UTS 400 Monitor & Keyboard
Post by: quadibloc on Tue, 06 October 2009, 14:08:40
Quote from: webwit;107677
I bet cupped keys are another urban legend. I think they were cupped to force the user to hit the keys dead center. And when that was no longer necessary, they were replaced by flatter keycaps which are actual superior in terms of speed and comfort.


Actually, the history is the other way around.

There were flat keys for old mechanical typewriters which had a round metal edge to hold in the clear plastic disk covering the paper key legend.

When keys were made out of plastic, they tended to have a spherical curvature, although there were some exceptions in the manual typewriter days.

The old IBM electric typewriters had square keys like a Flexowriter - which indeed seems to have an IBM electric typewriter mechanism. These had spherical depressions. And pretty much all other typewriter and computer terminal keyboards followed suit.

When the IBM PC came out - or, rather, its predecessor, the Datamaster - IBM had the brilliant idea of using keys with cylindrical tops. This still helped to locate the fingers, but because a cylinder is a 'reducible surface', plastic stickers with key legends on them could be applied to the tops of the keys. The popularity of the IBM PC drove nearly everyone else to adopt this style of key in fairly short order to make their keyboards look "modern". The IBM PC also introduced putting the key legends on the left side of the key, and the capital letters at the top to show that the keys only make capital letters when they're shifted (or when Caps Lock is on, but let's not get into that).

Cupped keys with centered legends, with the letter keys having big letters on them that filled the key, had been the standard before the IBM PC, used by everybody - DEC, IBM, Unisys, Control Data, NCR... and suddenly, IBM introduced a new style of keyboard, and everyone wanted to look like IBM... once again.
Title: Vintage Used Sperry Univac UTS 400 Monitor & Keyboard
Post by: quadibloc on Thu, 08 October 2009, 21:59:43
The photograph, surprisingly, lets one read most of the legends on the keys, but not all of them.

However, doing a little web searching, I found a document on a system that NASA used, called REACT, by which NASA researchers could search for scientific papers from home. They happened to use two terminals for this service, one made by Bunker-Ramo, and the other being the UTS 400.

Hence, I was able - without digging through my papers in the basement (where I think I have a brochure for this terminal) - to complete this diagram of the keyboard, with all the legends present:

(http://www.quadibloc.com/comp/images/uts400.gif)

Actually, the key marked "Program Unload" is one I'm still not sure about.
Title: Vintage Used Sperry Univac UTS 400 Monitor & Keyboard
Post by: msiegel on Thu, 08 October 2009, 22:04:47
Quote from: quadibloc;124001
Actually, the key marked "Program Unload" is one I'm still not sure about.


maybe it's an early form of Sys Rq :)

hmm, arrow keys on the left is neat idea!