10 Mar
2024
10 Mar
'24
2:39 p.m.
I picked up a keyboard for a Wyse terminal at a flea market the other
day. When I tried some of the keys, they couldn't be depressed.
I thought, at first, some dirt or debris had gotten stuck there, but on
closer look I saw something black below the keys that seemed to be
stuck. I pulled a key cap off and found a U shaped piece of black
plastic that was put there on purpose to prevent you from depressing the
key.
The question came to mind; "What sort of application would be so crude
that you would have to prevent the user from depressing certain keys?"
One of the keys was a Break key, which sort of made sense to me, because
it would halt a PDP-11 if that was the host machine.
This was the first time I had ever seen this kind of thing, was this
common long ago?
10 Mar
10 Mar
2:52 p.m.
On 3/10/24 14:39, Douglas Taylor via cctalk wrote:
[snip]
The question came to mind; "What sort of application would be so crude
that you would have to prevent the user from depressing certain keys?"
In the late 1980's I recall being on a trading floor in Tokyo and seeing
a keyboard with a metal shield that covered all but two or three keys.
In this case it wasn't the application, it was a desire by the company
in question to restrict their traders from using other than very
specific functionality associated with the application.
--
Christian Kennedy, Ph.D.
chris(a)mainecoon.com AF6AP | DB00000692 | PG00029419
http://www.mainecoon.com PGP KeyID 108DAB97
PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97
"Mr. McKittrick, after careful consideration…"
3:10 p.m.
I thought, at first, some dirt or debris had gotten
stuck there, but
on closer look I saw something black below the keys that seemed to be
stuck. I pulled a key cap off and found a U shaped piece of black
plastic that was put there on purpose to prevent you from depressing
the key.
The question came to mind; "What sort of
application would be so
crude that you would have to prevent the user from depressing certain
keys?"
I saw this in at least two applications:
1. The Service Merchandise chain
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Merchandise) used serial
terminals for their in-showroom catalog ordering. Some keys were
blocked somehow, though I never peeled up key caps to see how. :)
I want to say that backspace was one of the blocked keys, the
aggravation of which is probably why I remember this.
2. CLSI library systems (LIBS100 on PDP-11). Ours here had ADM-3A
(iirc) terminals with the break key blocked, iirc, though there were
plenty of other ways to discombobulate the thing inadvertently. It was
also available via dialup from keyboards that were not so modified.
I once heated up a paper clip to read hot and shoved it through the stem
of a TVI-925's SEND key, which was used for block mode functions, and
caused the terminal to vomit screen contents back to the host. Unwanted
presses of course produced a heck of a mess. (Older versions of our
application ran in block mode, but you could always hit ESC-S to send
the screen, and it was unfortunately easy, at least for me, to thwack
SEND by mistake.)
De
7:13 p.m.
I took a second look and here are the keys that were 'locked':
Set Up
Break
Del
Line INS Char
Line DEL Char
Scrn CLR Line
INS Repl
Escape
Home
All the Arrow keys, up, down, right, left
It's a standard ASCII Wyse Keyboard
Doug
On 3/10/2024 6:10 PM, Dennis Boone via cctalk wrote:
I thought, at
first, some dirt or debris had gotten stuck there, but
on closer look I saw something black below the keys that seemed to be
stuck. I pulled a key cap off and found a U shaped piece of black
plastic that was put there on purpose to prevent you from depressing
the key.
The question came to mind; "What sort of
application would be so
crude that you would have to prevent the user from depressing certain
keys?"
I saw this in at least two applications:
1. The Service Merchandise chain
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Merchandise) used serial
terminals for their in-showroom catalog ordering. Some keys were
blocked somehow, though I never peeled up key caps to see how. :)
I want to say that backspace was one of the blocked keys, the
aggravation of which is probably why I remember this.
2. CLSI library systems (LIBS100 on PDP-11). Ours here had ADM-3A
(iirc) terminals with the break key blocked, iirc, though there were
plenty of other ways to discombobulate the thing inadvertently. It was
also available via dialup from keyboards that were not so modified.
I once heated up a paper clip to read hot and shoved it through the stem
of a TVI-925's SEND key, which was used for block mode functions, and
caused the terminal to vomit screen contents back to the host. Unwanted
presses of course produced a heck of a mess. (Older versions of our
application ran in block mode, but you could always hit ESC-S to send
the screen, and it was unfortunately easy, at least for me, to thwack
SEND by mistake.)
De 
8:35 p.m.
O my Lord what have we here? Service Merchandise? They seemed to be the sole supplier of
the ITT Xtra pcs. I had the ITT Xtra XP, an xt/80286 hybrid (no 16 bit isa slots). The
memories!!
I learned how to hack games on some Origin title. A.D. 2042 or what have you.
Sent with Proton Mail secure email.
On Sunday, March 10th, 2024 at 10:13 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
I took a second look and here are the keys that were
'locked':
Set Up
Break
Del
Line INS Char
Line DEL Char
Scrn CLR Line
INS Repl
Escape
Home
All the Arrow keys, up, down, right, left
It's a standard ASCII Wyse Keyboard
Doug
On 3/10/2024 6:10 PM, Dennis Boone via cctalk wrote:
I
thought, at first, some dirt or debris had gotten stuck there, but
on closer look I saw something black below the keys that seemed to be
stuck. I pulled a key cap off and found a U shaped piece of black
plastic that was put there on purpose to prevent you from depressing
the key.
The question came to mind; "What sort of
application would be so
crude that you would have to prevent the user from depressing certain
keys?"
I saw this in at least two applications:
1. The Service Merchandise chain
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Merchandise) used serial
terminals for their in-showroom catalog ordering. Some keys were
blocked somehow, though I never peeled up key caps to see how. :)
I want to say that backspace was one of the blocked keys, the
aggravation of which is probably why I remember this.
2. CLSI library systems (LIBS100 on PDP-11). Ours here had ADM-3A
(iirc) terminals with the break key blocked, iirc, though there were
plenty of other ways to discombobulate the thing inadvertently. It was
also available via dialup from keyboards that were not so modified.
I once heated up a paper clip to read hot and shoved it through the stem
of a TVI-925's SEND key, which was used for block mode functions, and
caused the terminal to vomit screen contents back to the host. Unwanted
presses of course produced a heck of a mess. (Older versions of our
application ran in block mode, but you could always hit ESC-S to send
the screen, and it was unfortunately easy, at least for me, to thwack
SEND by mistake.)
De 
13 Mar
13 Mar
12:13 p.m.
Hello,
I’ve seen that on Wyse terminals used for library OPAC’s (online public access catalog)
running Dynix.
Tommy Chang
On Mar 10, 2024, at 7:22 PM, Douglas Taylor via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
I took a second look and here are the keys that were 'locked':
Set Up
Break
Del
Line INS Char
Line DEL Char
Scrn CLR Line
INS Repl
Escape
Home
All the Arrow keys, up, down, right, left
It's a standard ASCII Wyse Keyboard
Doug
On 3/10/2024 6:10 PM, Dennis Boone via cctalk
wrote:
I thought, at first, some dirt or debris had
gotten stuck there, but
on closer look I saw something black below the keys that seemed to be
stuck. I pulled a key cap off and found a U shaped piece of black
plastic that was put there on purpose to prevent you from depressing
the key.
The question came to mind; "What sort of
application would be so
crude that you would have to prevent the user from depressing certain
keys?"
I saw this in at least two applications:
1. The Service Merchandise chain
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Merchandise) used serial
terminals for their in-showroom catalog ordering. Some keys were
blocked somehow, though I never peeled up key caps to see how. :)
I want to say that backspace was one of the blocked keys, the
aggravation of which is probably why I remember this.
2. CLSI library systems (LIBS100 on PDP-11). Ours here had ADM-3A
(iirc) terminals with the break key blocked, iirc, though there were
plenty of other ways to discombobulate the thing inadvertently. It was
also available via dialup from keyboards that were not so modified.
I once heated up a paper clip to read hot and shoved it through the stem
of a TVI-925's SEND key, which was used for block mode functions, and
caused the terminal to vomit screen contents back to the host. Unwanted
presses of course produced a heck of a mess. (Older versions of our
application ran in block mode, but you could always hit ESC-S to send
the screen, and it was unfortunately easy, at least for me, to thwack
SEND by mistake.)
De
51
days inactive
54
days old
5 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
Christian Kennedy -
Dennis Boone -
Douglas Taylor -
Just Kant -
Tommy Chang