From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 23:29:39 -0400
From: Chris Siebenmann cks@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu
Subject: [9fans] arrow keys
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 62d3ffd0-eac8-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025
Message-ID: <19970911032939.-laTrYkWl-E-1OVtBZmRcJDPtKc99jMbUJuy-GF_AsU@z>

| I believe that NCD used to sell a keyboard known as the
| ``programmer's keyboard'' (not sure if that was it's actual
| name or just what John liked to call it).

 This is probably the NCD Unix keyboard, which as far as I know they
will still sell you. This is a PS/2 PClone keyboard, but apparently uses
a scancode set that is both the most logical and the most obscure, and
is thus not necessarily widely supported on PClones (it is useable on
SGI workstations and possibly other vendors who use PS/2 keyboards).

 I don't know enough about the PClone keyboard interface to say
whether it would be possibly to program Plan 9 to talk to it if
the motherboard wasn't cooperating.

 It's pretty compact, has all the keys in the sane places (including
ESC, control, and capslock), but still has a numeric keypad with the
usual set of stuff and squeezes the arrow keys in at the lower right
of the regular keys. I think it has a nice feel (it's my favorite
keyboard) but other people may disagree.

 People with X and the xkeycaps program can use that to see a
picture of its layout; the actual type is the NCD N-97.

	- cks