Posted by
chrisd
on from the click-smack-click-smack dept.
graymalkn writes "My wife has repetitive stress problems and prefers typing on old-fashioned mechanical typewriters. For Christmas, I converted a mechanical typewriter to work as a computer keyboard. My favorite feature: slap the carriage return for Enter."
Especially since he never got the backspace to work! (True; read the last page of his detail recounting)
-- --
@rjamestaylor on Ello
Seems so simple...
by
LostCluster
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Early keyboards used to have a "clicking" resistance mechanism, until "quiet" keyboards created the "flying until you hit a wall" feeling that the poster's wife complained of.
We seem to all have standardized now on similar keyboards in tactile function, but that clearly leaves a market to serve those who perfer other styles of keyboard. Could this kind of keyboard-that-feels-like-a-typewriter device have enough appeal to get a mainstream keyboard maker behind it?
how to save money & work less
by
spazoid12
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Wow, my wife wanted stuff like diamonds and expensive kitchen stuff. But, I could've saved money and got her instead something from the thrift store and a bunch of solder?
This also reminds me of my dad. He had old tools he preferred. No matter what fancy new modern tool we might buy for him, he prefers to use his old tools. And he never gets anything done. I thought only guys used that trick to get out of work.
Re:That's wierd
by
stefanlasiewski
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Hard typing can lead to RSI.
From the page:
she finds old-fashioned mechanical typewriters much easier on her fingers because they offer gradual resistance rather than the feeling of moving through air then hitting a wall, like most computer keyboards
Different keyboards work for different people. If you're used to typing on a Smith-Corona, I can definatly see how the "hitting a wall" can hurt your fingers.
-- "Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
My experiance
by
oliverthered
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Well, I play the guitar, not that well but that's another story.
I find I get more problems with my hands from using the wheel on the mouse then from playing the guitar.
Although the motions are fairly simila, the extra bit of resistance on the guitar strings might be what prevents the stress....
I've never had any problems typing, and I've been doing that long enough. (though again I use clicky not soft keyboards).
-- thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Finally! ICQ Makes Sense!
by
Myriad
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Those irritating typewriter sound effects in ICQ finally make sense!
-- "They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
I had a wonderful old IBM like that...
by
rcs1000
·
· Score: 5, Funny
It made this wonderful 'click' sound when you pressed a key, and it felt beautiufully made. I used it as my main typing keyboard for ages (although I needed a connector for using it with those pesky PS/2 ports we have these days...)
Best of all it was beautiful to use. If only the 's' key hasn't gone.
The funny bit is, I never missed the 'Windows' key.
(If anyone has a WORKING IBM keyboard like this, please, please reply as I would love to get a hold of another...)
There's different kinds of RSI
by
JaredOfEuropa
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Some people will feel pain in their fingertips when striking the keys because of the hard stop. Using a clickety IBM keyboard doesn't help and in some cases makes it worse. The impact on the fingers on a mechanical typewriter is much more gradual, with a soft stop at the end of the key travel.
You're right though that the keys on such a typewriter are harder to press, possibly leading to a different kind of RSI, which can be alleviated by switching from a typewriter to a regular keyboard, as some people working in a typing pool have found in the past.
The typewriter is an interesting solution, but I wonder if this woman might be off just as well with one of those rubber keyboards like the ones that came with those IBM PS/1 systems.
-- If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
no backaspace key???
by
pkiguruman
·
· Score: 5, Funny
what good is the keyboard if you can't backapspce? the user must be a bpretyt damn good typist.
(or maybe I'm just a really poor typist)
Re:Obligatory
by
stevejsmith
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Uh, I hope that you were kidding, but I can't help but fear that you weren't. Keyboards are operating system agnostic. You can use the same keyboard (with some different connectors for the older and more obscure, of course) with DOS, Windows XP, TiVo Linux, RedHat 8, OS/2, BeOS, a $100,000 IBM mainframe, a Sun SmartCard terminal, or anythign else that you use a keyboard to interact with. There is no need (and none that emplow it, to my knowledge) for a CPU, much a less an operating system, for a keyboard. It's simply circuitry.
Where to buy old Style IBM Keyboards
by
Deathlizard
·
· Score: 5, Informative
http://www.pckeyboard.com/
They made the original IBM keyboards and they still make them.
Looks like the monkey that has to type out your webserver content everytime someone makes a http request is going to die of overwork soon.:)
-- What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
One problem i can see right off the bat..
by
TheHawke
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
She's stuck using the margins that are available to them on the manual typewriter... You see, shes sitting there rattling away and then, DING! end of margin. No word wrap, no automatic carriage return. She has to hit the manual return level to move the unit back to its original position, thus issuing a CR to the program. The other issue is ZERO arrow keys so if she has to move the cursor to edit or change posistion or shift to another page, she has to fuss around with the mouse, hence more chances for her carpal tunnel to get worse. He should have butchered the machine up, disabled the automatic advance, got the backspace to work, and then found a way to wire in a 10-key keypad that would have given almost all the functions of a standard 101 KB.
Oh, I can see her now, trying to enter a URL on a browser with it... heheh it'll drive her bonkers...
-- First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
fundamentals of RSI
by
trance9
·
· Score: 5, Informative
This just needs to be said:
1. A new keyboard isn't a good solution to an RSI problem. The only good solution is to type less. Changing your keyboard may "feel" better for awhile because you will be stressing different muscles. But you will still be stressing muscles and unless you make a fundamental change the problem will come back again.
2. Posture matters more than anything else. Perhaps with "more resistence" you are forced into a better posture. A good typing posture leaves your arms free so that all of the muscles through your arms, shoulders, and even back can come into play while you type. By distributing the work throughout as many different muscle groups as you can you eliminate the stress on each muscle.
3. You stress your muscles even when you are not typing, just by sitting in the "typing position" you are creating stress. It takes work to hold your fingers ready over the home row, and if you don't get a break from that, that alone can contribute to your RSI.
I had two rounds with RSI problems and I'll tell you how I solved it--today I'm seemingly healthy again. I tried all kinds of different keyboards, mouses, workstation arrangements, etc., but only the fundamentals worked in the end.
My first round at RSI I won by changing the fundamentals: I drastically cut the amount of time I spend sitting in front of a computer by giving up video games completely. Nothing else worked, but cutting the time I spent in front of a computer in half made a difference.
My second round with RSI was more difficult to beat, I had to change my attitude. First I took a two month hiatus from touching computers--I was consulting, so I simply stopped consulting for awhile until I felt normal again. When I returned I tried to make some changes, like altering my keyboard, and I failed. Back to another two month break. In the end I had to learn to get up and leave my workstation every so often--anywhere from 15 minutes to 30min, and just go for a little walk around the office. I also had to learn that no matter how pressing my deadlines were, if I didn't feel right, it was time to go home.
It took me a LONG time to change my work attitudes, so that I no longer sat in front of a computer for too many hours, or worked too much in a day. I learned to think while walking around the room rather than sitting at my desk, I learned to take more breaks, and these are FUNDAMENTAL things that matter--changing your keyboard is a minor factor at best.
Before I recovered I'd lost a total of five months to long breaks required to get me back to a healthy state. I was paranoid about it, I stopped on pain and took long breaks--many people feel work pressure and try to find ways to work through the pain, I just gave it up. I figured that although I suffered financially at the time (and still feel some effects of that) it was more important to me to have a long and full career in the future.
I've had things pretty well under control for the past five years now, but it takes dedication and paranoia and you have to grow a pretty serious attitude about it.
I think people who feel they can "fix it" by changing keyboards or rearranging their workstation are only prolonging their suffering.
Re:fundamentals of RSI
by
jcsehak
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Very informative; thanks. Let me add to it:
If your problem is not with the keyboard, but with the mouse, an easy solution that cuts your pain in half is to simply learn to mouse with your off-hand. It's so obvious, it's easy to overlook. That way, when one starts to hurt, just switch over. Of course, this is irrelevant to typists.
Also, guitarists have had this problem sinch before keyboards were invented. Stretches for the guitarist are equally useful to the computer scientist.
The human side of it
by
andyring
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
All technobabble and RSI talk aside, everyone seems to have overlooked a big part of this. Be honest, people. How many of you would be willing to put this much time and effort into a project simply for the purpose of making your wife/husband/boy/girlfriend happy? I read the article (yes, I'm actually a/.er who reads the articles, a shock I know) and while I found it interesting and intuitive, the thought at the back of my mind was, "Dang, this guy must really love his wife to undertake a project like this just for her."
Way to go, sir! You sound like a great husband, a guy your wife was lucky to snag!
Sorry, but you're quite wrong about the lack of a CPU. Most (all?) PC keyboards have an 8048, or an 8048 core in an ASIC. 'Twas the stuff of legendary hackery to harness that 8048 for your own purposes, back in the day.
-- You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
It seemed a little sluggish, so here's a mirror. Be gentle with it.
And for the tablet PC...
by
Alien+Being
·
· Score: 5, Funny
a hammer and chisel!
Re:It goes without saying...
by
BigBlockMopar
·
· Score: 5, Informative
...that this guy should learn how to solder.
Sorry. But this is simultaneously an amazing project and an act of butchery.
A few words of advice for anyone trying this themselves: use electronics solder- it doesn't stick to breadboard. I later got curious and tested regular solder on an old NIC and it stuck everywhere. Watch what you buy.
"Regular solder"? Is that plumber's solder, like you'd use to sweat two pipes together?
Solder includes chemicals (flux) which help to clean the pieces of metal which are being attached. Electronic solder is either rosin core or organic core; they're fairly gentle. Acid core is used by plumbers and the post-soldering remains of the flux attack electronic components over the years.
Based on some of the pictures, I believe that the soldering to the PC board was done with an overly-large soldering iron. A fine grounded-tip 15-25W soldering iron is *essential*. My favorites are the tiny little Ungar irons from just before Weller bought them out.
BTW, it *is* possible to solder to aluminum, but it's very different. For one thing, aluminum coats itself almost instantly with a very fine layer of very hard aluminum oxide. Solder will not stick to this layer. The other problem is that aluminum conducts heat away from the attempted soldered connection. A large-wattage iron with a sharpened tip will do the trick. Apply a puddle of solder and, scrape the aluminum under the puddle with the tip of the hot iron. A bond will form, and the strength will be mostly dependent on how well you scraped the aluminum under the puddle.
Gaffer tape has a tendency to dry out, shrink and peel off over time. This limits the longevity of this particular modification. Of course, you probably don't want to cut up the typewriter since you chose it because you like it, and they don't make 'em anymore, so I applaud the reversibility.
Rather than attempting to make a distinct "switch" for each button, why not simply have a scheme where each keypress will ground a wire to the crossbar? Of course, that won't work with the keyboard's matrix arrangement, but that can be easily solved in a minute.
PC board looks like a good way to insulate parts of your switch assemblies, since it's cheap, readily-available, easy to work with, and you can use it to make narrow switches.
Onto each one of the levers (which are steel) you could solder a small piece of printed circuit board with a custom pattern. (You can buy printed circuit board etching supplies at Radio Shack.) One part of this tiny board's pattern is used to solder it to the lever. Then a gap, with no copper on the board. The opposite end of this pattern is a place to which you can solder a flexible wire and a small fold of some springy nickel-plated steel.
The tiny board then rides with the lever and the new springy-steel contact then connects the wire to the crossbar.
As for connecting the keyboard to the matrix, my first thought is to use optocouplers. Optocouplers are merely an LED and a photocell built into the same case. They're meant to isolate different parts of electronic circuits.
Solder a piece of flexible wire to the crossbar, and connect that directly to the keyboard's ground on the PS/2 or DIN connector. (You can get the pinout from the Internet.) Take the +5V lead from the keyboard and put about a 500 ohm resistor in series with it, then carry that across to the anodes of the LEDs in the optocouplers. Connect each cathode to each wire coming off the lever boards. Now, when you hit a key, the LED in the corresponding optocoupler should be lit.
The photocell in an optocoupler is actually a kind of transistor, which is essentially an electronic switch. Connect each optocoupler to its corresponding pair of contacts on the keyboard's matrix. Make sure you get the polarity right, a quick check of the keyboard with a voltmeter should do it.
Choose an optocoupler with a good transfer characteristic; probably Darlington-outputs. LEDs need current limiting, and that's what the 500 ohm resistor is for. Now, there's ONE resistor being used to power all those LEDs in the optocoupler, and it limits the single or total LED current to 10mA. This is done because motherboards often have fuses to keep keyboard current below about 50mA. Even if you hold down all the keys on the keyboard, you will not draw more than 10mA. Blowing the keyboard fuse on your motherboard would suck.
Now, when the Smithsonian comes calling and wants your typewriter because FDR used to keep it in the trunk of the Presidential Limo? Desolder the wire from the crossbar, desolder all the little pieces of printed circuit board from the levers, and the typewriter is undamaged.
Slashdot Mirror
So tell me the truth
What exactly makes you want
a keyboard that jams?
Don't give me none of this "nature theme" business.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Early keyboards used to have a "clicking" resistance mechanism, until "quiet" keyboards created the "flying until you hit a wall" feeling that the poster's wife complained of.
We seem to all have standardized now on similar keyboards in tactile function, but that clearly leaves a market to serve those who perfer other styles of keyboard. Could this kind of keyboard-that-feels-like-a-typewriter device have enough appeal to get a mainstream keyboard maker behind it?
Wow, my wife wanted stuff like diamonds and expensive kitchen stuff. But, I could've saved money and got her instead something from the thrift store and a bunch of solder?
This also reminds me of my dad. He had old tools he preferred. No matter what fancy new modern tool we might buy for him, he prefers to use his old tools. And he never gets anything done. I thought only guys used that trick to get out of work.
Hard typing can lead to RSI.
From the page:
she finds old-fashioned mechanical typewriters much easier on her fingers because they offer gradual resistance rather than the feeling of moving through air then hitting a wall, like most computer keyboards
Different keyboards work for different people. If you're used to typing on a Smith-Corona, I can definatly see how the "hitting a wall" can hurt your fingers.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Well, I play the guitar, not that well but that's another story.
I find I get more problems with my hands from using the wheel on the mouse then from playing the guitar.
Although the motions are fairly simila, the extra bit of resistance on the guitar strings might be what prevents the stress....
I've never had any problems typing, and I've been doing that long enough. (though again I use clicky not soft keyboards).
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
It made this wonderful 'click' sound when you pressed a key, and it felt beautiufully made. I used it as my main typing keyboard for ages (although I needed a connector for using it with those pesky PS/2 ports we have these days...)
Best of all it was beautiful to use. If only the 's' key hasn't gone.
The funny bit is, I never missed the 'Windows' key.
(If anyone has a WORKING IBM keyboard like this, please, please reply as I would love to get a hold of another...)
--- My dad's political betting
Your wife will be stuck in vi forever.
Some people will feel pain in their fingertips when striking the keys because of the hard stop. Using a clickety IBM keyboard doesn't help and in some cases makes it worse. The impact on the fingers on a mechanical typewriter is much more gradual, with a soft stop at the end of the key travel.
You're right though that the keys on such a typewriter are harder to press, possibly leading to a different kind of RSI, which can be alleviated by switching from a typewriter to a regular keyboard, as some people working in a typing pool have found in the past.
The typewriter is an interesting solution, but I wonder if this woman might be off just as well with one of those rubber keyboards like the ones that came with those IBM PS/1 systems.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
what good is the keyboard if you can't backapspce? the user must be a bpretyt damn good typist.
(or maybe I'm just a really poor typist)
Uh, I hope that you were kidding, but I can't help but fear that you weren't. Keyboards are operating system agnostic. You can use the same keyboard (with some different connectors for the older and more obscure, of course) with DOS, Windows XP, TiVo Linux, RedHat 8, OS/2, BeOS, a $100,000 IBM mainframe, a Sun SmartCard terminal, or anythign else that you use a keyboard to interact with. There is no need (and none that emplow it, to my knowledge) for a CPU, much a less an operating system, for a keyboard. It's simply circuitry.
http://www.pckeyboard.com/
They made the original IBM keyboards and they still make them.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Looks like the monkey that has to type out your webserver content everytime someone makes a http request is going to die of overwork soon. :)
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
She's stuck using the margins that are available to them on the manual typewriter... You see, shes sitting there rattling away and then, DING! end of margin. No word wrap, no automatic carriage return. She has to hit the manual return level to move the unit back to its original position, thus issuing a CR to the program.
The other issue is ZERO arrow keys so if she has to move the cursor to edit or change posistion or shift to another page, she has to fuss around with the mouse, hence more chances for her carpal tunnel to get worse.
He should have butchered the machine up, disabled the automatic advance, got the backspace to work, and then found a way to wire in a 10-key keypad that would have given almost all the functions of a standard 101 KB.
Oh, I can see her now, trying to enter a URL on a browser with it... heheh it'll drive her bonkers...
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
This just needs to be said:
1. A new keyboard isn't a good solution to an RSI problem. The only good solution is to type less. Changing your keyboard may "feel" better for awhile because you will be stressing different muscles. But you will still be stressing muscles and unless you make a fundamental change the problem will come back again.
2. Posture matters more than anything else. Perhaps with "more resistence" you are forced into a better posture. A good typing posture leaves your arms free so that all of the muscles through your arms, shoulders, and even back can come into play while you type. By distributing the work throughout as many different muscle groups as you can you eliminate the stress on each muscle.
3. You stress your muscles even when you are not typing, just by sitting in the "typing position" you are creating stress. It takes work to hold your fingers ready over the home row, and if you don't get a break from that, that alone can contribute to your RSI.
I had two rounds with RSI problems and I'll tell you how I solved it--today I'm seemingly healthy again. I tried all kinds of different keyboards, mouses, workstation arrangements, etc., but only the fundamentals worked in the end.
My first round at RSI I won by changing the fundamentals: I drastically cut the amount of time I spend sitting in front of a computer by giving up video games completely. Nothing else worked, but cutting the time I spent in front of a computer in half made a difference.
My second round with RSI was more difficult to beat, I had to change my attitude. First I took a two month hiatus from touching computers--I was consulting, so I simply stopped consulting for awhile until I felt normal again. When I returned I tried to make some changes, like altering my keyboard, and I failed. Back to another two month break. In the end I had to learn to get up and leave my workstation every so often--anywhere from 15 minutes to 30min, and just go for a little walk around the office. I also had to learn that no matter how pressing my deadlines were, if I didn't feel right, it was time to go home.
It took me a LONG time to change my work attitudes, so that I no longer sat in front of a computer for too many hours, or worked too much in a day. I learned to think while walking around the room rather than sitting at my desk, I learned to take more breaks, and these are FUNDAMENTAL things that matter--changing your keyboard is a minor factor at best.
Before I recovered I'd lost a total of five months to long breaks required to get me back to a healthy state. I was paranoid about it, I stopped on pain and took long breaks--many people feel work pressure and try to find ways to work through the pain, I just gave it up. I figured that although I suffered financially at the time (and still feel some effects of that) it was more important to me to have a long and full career in the future.
I've had things pretty well under control for the past five years now, but it takes dedication and paranoia and you have to grow a pretty serious attitude about it.
I think people who feel they can "fix it" by changing keyboards or rearranging their workstation are only prolonging their suffering.
Way to go, sir! You sound like a great husband, a guy your wife was lucky to snag!
Sorry, but you're quite wrong about the lack of a CPU. Most (all?) PC keyboards have an 8048, or an 8048 core in an ASIC. 'Twas the stuff of legendary hackery to harness that 8048 for your own purposes, back in the day.
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
It seemed a little sluggish, so here's a mirror. Be gentle with it.
a hammer and chisel!
...that this guy should learn how to solder.
Sorry. But this is simultaneously an amazing project and an act of butchery.
A few words of advice for anyone trying this themselves: use electronics solder- it doesn't stick to breadboard. I later got curious and tested regular solder on an old NIC and it stuck everywhere. Watch what you buy."Regular solder"? Is that plumber's solder, like you'd use to sweat two pipes together?
Solder includes chemicals (flux) which help to clean the pieces of metal which are being attached. Electronic solder is either rosin core or organic core; they're fairly gentle. Acid core is used by plumbers and the post-soldering remains of the flux attack electronic components over the years.
Based on some of the pictures, I believe that the soldering to the PC board was done with an overly-large soldering iron. A fine grounded-tip 15-25W soldering iron is *essential*. My favorites are the tiny little Ungar irons from just before Weller bought them out.
BTW, it *is* possible to solder to aluminum, but it's very different. For one thing, aluminum coats itself almost instantly with a very fine layer of very hard aluminum oxide. Solder will not stick to this layer. The other problem is that aluminum conducts heat away from the attempted soldered connection. A large-wattage iron with a sharpened tip will do the trick. Apply a puddle of solder and, scrape the aluminum under the puddle with the tip of the hot iron. A bond will form, and the strength will be mostly dependent on how well you scraped the aluminum under the puddle.
Gaffer tape has a tendency to dry out, shrink and peel off over time. This limits the longevity of this particular modification. Of course, you probably don't want to cut up the typewriter since you chose it because you like it, and they don't make 'em anymore, so I applaud the reversibility.
Rather than attempting to make a distinct "switch" for each button, why not simply have a scheme where each keypress will ground a wire to the crossbar? Of course, that won't work with the keyboard's matrix arrangement, but that can be easily solved in a minute.
PC board looks like a good way to insulate parts of your switch assemblies, since it's cheap, readily-available, easy to work with, and you can use it to make narrow switches.
Onto each one of the levers (which are steel) you could solder a small piece of printed circuit board with a custom pattern. (You can buy printed circuit board etching supplies at Radio Shack.) One part of this tiny board's pattern is used to solder it to the lever. Then a gap, with no copper on the board. The opposite end of this pattern is a place to which you can solder a flexible wire and a small fold of some springy nickel-plated steel.
The tiny board then rides with the lever and the new springy-steel contact then connects the wire to the crossbar.
As for connecting the keyboard to the matrix, my first thought is to use optocouplers. Optocouplers are merely an LED and a photocell built into the same case. They're meant to isolate different parts of electronic circuits.
Solder a piece of flexible wire to the crossbar, and connect that directly to the keyboard's ground on the PS/2 or DIN connector. (You can get the pinout from the Internet.) Take the +5V lead from the keyboard and put about a 500 ohm resistor in series with it, then carry that across to the anodes of the LEDs in the optocouplers. Connect each cathode to each wire coming off the lever boards. Now, when you hit a key, the LED in the corresponding optocoupler should be lit.
The photocell in an optocoupler is actually a kind of transistor, which is essentially an electronic switch. Connect each optocoupler to its corresponding pair of contacts on the keyboard's matrix. Make sure you get the polarity right, a quick check of the keyboard with a voltmeter should do it.
Choose an optocoupler with a good transfer characteristic; probably Darlington-outputs. LEDs need current limiting, and that's what the 500 ohm resistor is for. Now, there's ONE resistor being used to power all those LEDs in the optocoupler, and it limits the single or total LED current to 10mA. This is done because motherboards often have fuses to keep keyboard current below about 50mA. Even if you hold down all the keys on the keyboard, you will not draw more than 10mA. Blowing the keyboard fuse on your motherboard would suck.
Now, when the Smithsonian comes calling and wants your typewriter because FDR used to keep it in the trunk of the Presidential Limo? Desolder the wire from the crossbar, desolder all the little pieces of printed circuit board from the levers, and the typewriter is undamaged.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Anyone notice he took a photo of his checkbook on his photos?
/ pages/type07.htm
http://www.multipledigression.com/typewriter/pics
Opps.