geekhack
geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: Hofy on Thu, 10 September 2009, 22:54:33
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I ran across one of the AnyKey Gateway 2000 boards today at a Goodwill in St. Paul MN. They wanted $5 for it. (No I did not buy it.)
I did pop a couple of keys of it to see what kind it was. (Rubber dome). The thing that surprised me was that the keys attached in a cross pattern like the Cherry switches and keys.
But the real kicker was that the keys where all double shot!! (you listening ripster?)
I wonder if these would fit on a Cherry board or a Filco. They may be nice for a dye project.
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I never knew they used rubber domes. How sad!
I'd still have bought it for $5.
Even if you don't want to use it/strip the controller, you could probably sell it for 10X that amount?
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did someone say double-shot?
hmm... interesting :D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_AnyKey
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I had an AnyKey a while ago and it was a very good keyboard despite having rubber domes. If I remember correctly, it was also reinforced by a steel plate like the IBM's and older Dells's (including Quietkey's).
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I purchased today a rubber-dome keyboard which had the reversed-L layout, but with the |\ key between the space bar and the left Alt key, which was moved over to touch the ctrl key.
On the other side, it had a key marked Macro.
I did a web search to see if this keyboard really did the macro function itself, or if software on the computer just did it, and the key only sent a special scan code. I don't have an answer yet, but in that search, I turned up the Gateway AnyKey, and read about it.
I'm not sure if that's the kind of keyboard I would recommend that Unicomp make. After all, it wasn't popular enough for Gateway to keep it around, and the design is as bulky as a 122-key keyboard. But I do think that it would be nice if they could put similar functionality in a smaller keyboard.
One way to avoid the need for a lot of extra keys would be to have "Remap Orig" and "Remap Curr", so you don't need to worry about losing the ability to map the original function of a key you have already remapped something to.