Why I use old hardware

Re:Why I use old hardware by cr0sh on Wednesday January 23, 2019 @05:39PM (#18983934)

Best laptop keyboard I ever used was on a Compaq SLT/386 I owned. Keyboard could be detached from the laptop (ok, today it would be considered a "luggable", but back then, it was a nice machine), and it had a coiled cord that plugged into the computer underneath where the keyboard sat.

You could unplug it from the computer (it was a mini-din PS/2 style plug). The keyboard itself wasn't mechanical (not a buckling spring or similar system), but it did have full-travel keys and a nice feel for typing on.

I got mine used and had to build a custom battery pack from old cell phone batteries, which made me have to remove 2 meg of RAM (to fit the larger custom battery pack), leaving me with 6 meg instead of 8. I had Caldera OpenDOS installed on it:

http://www.deltasoft.com/opendos.htm

http://esca.atomki.hu/paradise/dos/opendos-en.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-DOS

...with Monkey Linux installed on top of that (Monkey is a distro that used DOS for the underlying file system - you could even share data easily):

http://projectdevolve.tripod.com/ (downloads don't work)

http://www.ipt.ntnu.no/~knutb/linux486/download/monkey/monke...

I'm honestly not sure where or if you can still get a copy of that distro - I should look into it; maybe I should host my copy somewhere...

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Re:Why I use old hardware by magduf on Thursday January 24, 2019 @02:46PM (#18992221)

I can't speak to laptop keyboards that far back in time, but for a very long time, Thinkpads and Dell Latitudes had the best keyboards for laptops (obviously they weren't going to compare to a Model M or other mechanical keyboard).

But even these have gone away, to be replaced by the shitty island keys.

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