PS2 keyboard

On 18 Jul 2005 14:11:16 -0400, Allan Adler staggered into the Black Sun and said:

Yikes. Redhat 7.0-3 are so old they've got mold growing all over them, and 7.0 was buggy as hell. You may want to think about upgrading to something newer--Fedora Core 3 is OK if you like the way Redhat did things.

"You get what you pay for" is *usually* true with hardware.

Many, many keyboards use this "rubber-dome" tech. It's not quite the same as buckling-spring, but it does provide good tactile feedback, is cheap to manufacture, and doesn't require much maintenance.

Sounds nasty. Er... some kind of short or something in the board? Bad scancodes being reported? Crud under the keys?

I can't say for sure, but I think the 2 desktop keyboards I use frequently are rubber-dome. They've worked fine, barring the time I spilled orange juice into one of them.

Not quite. For the console, you can use loadkeys, showkey, dumpkeys, and keymaps. For X, you can use xmodmap to map any single key to any other single key, and you can set your .xinitrc (or your Autostart directory in KDE, or whatever) to execute the right xmodmap commands whenever you start X.

I like my Microsoft Natural Pro keyboard--good keyboard feel, ergonomic, the key is between Backspace and Enter like Eris intended, plenty of extra keys I can map to useful things with xbindkeys, and a PS-2 plug. It's not buckling-spring but probably rubber-dome--I can't take it apart and check right now though.

There are probably some IBM Model M ("Indestructible") keyboards available on Ebay near you. There are also some IBM PS-2 keyboards available via pricewatch.com , though the cheapest one that I'd buy is $47. I hear that Unicomp makes buckling-spring and capacitive-switch keyboards, but I can't find any ads for Unicomp on pricewatch. Sigh.

I would say that you *do not* want to buy a cheap keyboard. You're probably going to be typing a lot, and the hbuttles involved in cheap hardware tend to outweigh the money you save, at least IME. HTH,

-- Matt GThere is no Darkness in Eternity-But only Light too dim for us to see Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong ----------------------------- This space sort of for rent.