KeyTronic KB-200

woody · 17 Apr 2014, 15:43

During a long power outage today, bored I dug out an old "Nibble" magazine (1983) and saw ad for this:

Rare and old specimen. Anyone ever met one?

Britney Spears · 17 Apr 2014, 19:33

I really like the "Keys in Familiar Typewriter Locations" feature.

Apart from that it reminds me of a IBM PC 5150 Keyboard:

So they polished an Apple board and out came an IBM one? Weird!

Daniel Beardsmore · 17 Apr 2014, 21:37

See:

[wiki]Key Tronic Columbia[/wiki]
[wiki]Key Tronic E03091007[/wiki]

It's just the bog standard Key Tronic design from the 80s — it looks like they didn't even make an effort to give it an Apple keyboard layout, leaving it with the Model F XT layout.

7bit · 17 Apr 2014, 23:14

Looks familiar to me:

Seems to be a slightly different layout, but the case looks the same.

Muirium · 17 Apr 2014, 23:27

Pity the photo of the original ad is too low res to make out the legends on the mods. Because I essentially use my XT to just this effect!

Don't know about the Apple ][, but the Mac needs more mods:

Hypersphere · 18 Apr 2014, 02:36

woody wrote:During a long power outage today, bored I dug out an old "Nibble" magazine (1983) and saw ad for this:

Spoiler:
Rare and old specimen. Anyone ever met one?

Haven't seen the actual board, but today while scanning eBay, I saw the same ad as a poster that was for sale. Strange coincidence!

Hypersphere · 18 Apr 2014, 02:52

Muirium wrote:Pity the photo of the original ad is too low res to make out the legends on the mods. Because I essentially use my XT to just this effect!

Don't know about the Apple ][, but the Mac needs more mods:

Spoiler:

Following your example, I have further remapped my IBM XT to include the extra Ctrl keys on the bottom row in addition to the Option (Alt) and Command keys that I had already mapped. Now, like your XT, I have six modifiers on the bottom row, plus the Ctrl to the left of the "A" key. This keyboard is becoming more and more versatile!

It would be possible to do something similar with a Model M, but using the NumPad keys as modifiers would be a bit of a stretch. With a 122-key IBM, there is a possibility for six modifiers without resorting to using the NumPad; 8 modifiers with the NumPad!

Back on topic, yes, the Keytronic Apple ][ keyboard looks quite a lot like the IBM XT keyboard, which turns out to be a great HID for a modern Mac after installing a converter and doing a bit of remapping. And the XT has the added benefit of capacitive buckling spring switches. What a treat!

Daniel Beardsmore · 18 Apr 2014, 14:41

Created as a redirect:

[wiki]Key Tronic KB-200[/wiki]

Hypersphere · 18 Apr 2014, 17:44

I found the link to the Keytronic ad on eBay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Key-Tronic-KB-5 ... 20e3a46107
(Not affiliated with seller!)

Daniel Beardsmore · 18 Apr 2014, 18:00

KB-5150 added to the wiki article.

woody · 18 Apr 2014, 18:23

I did a scan of the magazine ad, but it is about 3.5MB and way over the upload limit.
Any easy way to upload somewhere, or maybe somebody's email to send to?
It needs descreening and resizing, and then it can find it's way to the Wiki.

EDIT: What is interesting about this keyboard, is that it is for Apple II / II+, and the interface is a strobed parallel bus. And since Apple II lacks function buttons, they filled the left rows with BASIC commands. Guess they're just hard-macro buttons. Funny, funny.

bhtooefr · 18 Apr 2014, 18:34

The original Apple II keyboard, which this is meant to replace, only has three mods, Ctrl, Shift, and Rept (manually activated auto repeat).

Daniel Beardsmore · 18 Apr 2014, 19:14

If the wiki has an upload limit, it's well above 3.5 MB.

Hypersphere · 18 Apr 2014, 19:22

woody wrote:I did a scan of the magazine ad, but it is about 3.5MB and way over the upload limit.
Any easy way to upload somewhere, or maybe somebody's email to send to?
It needs descreening and resizing, and then it can find it's way to the Wiki.

EDIT: What is interesting about this keyboard, is that it is for Apple II / II+, and the interface is a strobed parallel bus. And since Apple II lacks function buttons, they filled the left rows with BASIC commands. Guess they're just hard-macro buttons. Funny, funny.

You could convert the image file to a different format or resolution to shrink the file size.

woody · 19 Apr 2014, 00:19

No, the forum has upload limit of about 1MB. Initially I wanted to simply include it in this thread.

And, yes, of course I can reduce the resolution and file size, but as I said before, it needs descreening, which is best done on the original data. I lack tool to do this.

Here's "reduced" image that the hosting website has done automatically. Without previous descreening it looks worse.

Rightmost part is impossible to scan without destroying the magazine binding.

bhtooefr · 19 Apr 2014, 02:26

Heh, that controller is actually pretty damn smart, with how much remapping is needed to get it to do everything it's doing on such a primitive platform.

And the arrow key position is incredibly awkward.

Muirium · 19 Apr 2014, 02:33

The ad is now readable, thanks for that.

Wonder where the 11th function key is of which they speak: the ad appears to point to Tab! But one thing you can't argue with is Full Shifting Capability…

Is that Power key as harmful as I fear? I like that it has an indicator, just like the Apple ][ itself.

You've got to wonder how many people ever bought external keyboards for their integrated microcomputers. I like this ad's point: 10 Foot Cable… For… uh… Portability! Because you can just walk around the room while typing on this beast?

bhtooefr · 19 Apr 2014, 02:51

The Apple II didn't have a tab key until the //e. That key probably sent Ctrl-I, though - pretty sure that's what it sends on a //e or newer (another thing to remember is that Ctrl is simply, subtract 0x40 from the generated character, and Shift adds to the character's value too, but this is done at the keyboard controller level, not the OS level, and without the Shift Key Mod, a pre-//e can't see any of its modifiers state (or, for that matter, even a //e can't sense Shift), and no Apple II (except maybe a IIGS with a special ADB driver loaded) can sense Ctrl's state).

I suspect they actually missed one, with that Home key. I can think of two ways it can possibly work - the first way is simply left arrow 40 times, but that's not reliable. The second way is that it sends HOME as a command, which is the command to clear the screen in both Integer and Applesoft BASIC.

My guess is it's just a macro for four or five spaces.

Most of those are macros, though - boot is probably PR#6<CR>, and many of those are probably just the name of the command that's on them.

Also, the caps lock support actually would have required a "lowercase mod", which is a new character generator that has lowercase support. You see, an Apple II normally is uppercase only. There was also a "shift key mod", which was a jumper from the shift key to the joystick port, on PB2, that you'd have wanted. (Many programs simply checked PB2 to see if you wanted shift or not, back then. The Apple //e actually had support for this on the motherboard without actually running the jumper wire, for backwards compatibility.) And, Apple stole the approach (on PB0 and PB1) to add a couple new modifiers - Open Apple and Solid Apple, which then became Command and Option respectively when the Apple II and Mac keyboard lines merged with the IIGS.

Daniel Beardsmore · 19 Apr 2014, 14:57

Wait a minute — that's not the same ad as before. Are both versions from 1983?

woody · 19 Apr 2014, 18:23

First one was from random ad poster sold on eBay. Last one is from "Nibble" magazine vol. 4 / no. 4 (1983).

JP! · 19 Sep 2022, 19:07

I love Apple picking in the fall. I just got one of these

Notice a couple differences from the marketing photo such as the nav keys and the wider stepped keys.

Edit:
Pretty sure now that the Apple badge in place of the Keytronic badge was lifted from an Apple IIe. The Apple pin in the center I believe was a promotional lapel tie tack pin. There is a really tiny hole drilled into the case for the pin. I would say whoever added the flair to this keyboard did a nice job. They wanted to really make it clear that this keyboard was for an Apple II.

: 1.JPG (935.13 KiB) Viewed 3327 times

: 2.JPG (553.86 KiB) Viewed 3327 times

A few more:

Spoiler:

TNT · 19 Sep 2022, 21:00

That's a gorgeous board. Shame it comes with those switches