On the original Apple ][, the reset key was indeed just a regular key that was easy to press. On later models (the ][ plus, I think) Apple used a spring for the reset key that required a higher force to depress it. Finally, on the Apple //e, you had to press Control+Open Apple+Reset to reset the machine... but I have no idea if Franklin did anything special to the reset key on their Apple clone.

It was just ctrl-reset for the reset button. Ctrl-open apple-reset was a hard reboot. But since open apple was aliased to one of the paddle buttons, you could accidentally trigger a hard reboot if you happened to have something sitting on top of the paddles that you weren’t using.

yes, i think that the trend was to make it harder to reset, but why not simply have a reset switch? my dragon32 (6809 processor) has one on the back and the research machines 380zs (z80 processor) had an illuminated switch on the front of the steel case of the brute, which reset and dumped you into the front panel/machine-code debugger. oh, those happy days.

it was a separate momentary with a red square plastic cap. I think it was under the keyboard? or on the side?

On early Apple II systems, it was part of the keyboard, on the rightmost side of the number row. It wasn't made separate until later models.

I had a Franklin .. I remember the switch, it was something I kept when I finally scrapped it. definitely think it was under the keyboard bevel

On the Apple III (the failed successor of the II), they really went all out.

Check out the pictures here: https://deskthority.net/viewtopic.php?t=17354

The RESET key is so well-hidden it's not even visible in the first picture. In the second picture, you can see the notch along the back of the keyboard near the numeric keypad. In the third picture, with the cover removed, you can how the key extends backward at a perpendicular angle.

You're never going to hit that thing by mistake. You might not even realize it exists until someone points it out to you.

On the first Mac, you had to attach the hardware for the reset ‘key’ yourself, if you wanted one. See photo “3 of 3” on https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nma... for the part you had to insert. The two ‘prongs’ reached two switches for NMI and reset inside the Mac.

It's worth pointing out that this was very much by design. Reset on the Apple II was a warm reset. It provided the ability to break out of a hung, spinning or otherwise misbehaving program and get back to the boot-time monitor prompt in a state where your live in-memory work wasn't lost.

Remember the original computer didn't have a disk yet. The only storage was a cassette tape operating at 6000 baud. You didn't hack on it by editting a text file and then compiling it from storage, you programmed in-memory (either in BASIC or by hand-assembling instructions at the monitor). Then you tried it, and if it worked you started worrying about how to get that pickled to storage in a recoverable way.

It was a different world, and "reset" was absolutely a critical feature.

But yeah, fast forward a few years and the median user was "running" software and not writing it, and we all forgot about why it was there.

That was a nice feature of the Atari 800. Reset button is off to the side away from the keyboard. With little plastic risers / borders above and below it to further reduce the chance of accidentally hitting it. Even though I was a very clumsy kid, I don't think I ever inadvertently reset it. Which means it worked well in my sample size of 1.

The BBC Microcomputer had an "Escape" key and a potentially misleadingly named "Break" key - but "Break" was actually more like a reset key (with CTRL-Break being a "harder" reset and SHIFT-Break prompting the computer to boot off a floppy disk).

But one nice feature was that if you were simply programming in BASIC and immediately typed OLD after hitting "Break", you had a chance of recovering your program if you weren't unlucky.

And the other feature which this comment reminded me of - at least some models of the BBC Micro had a hardware lock on the "Break" key, so with a small screwdriver you could turn a little piece of plastic to completely prevent the key being pressed!

The modern equivalent of having a "sleep" button on the keyboard is only a marginal improvement. Such a time waster.