Bell & Howell Micromodule 85 : info wanted - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

18 Aug 1999

Sorry to revive such an old thread, but I've only just caught up with list
traffic since I went away...

...
     4   5   8   C 
    W   R
 3   6   9   D      P   D
 2   7   A   E      L   S
 1   0   B   F      X   B
 --------------     ------ 
    Hmmmm...  kinda neat if you're programming in Octal all the time...
 then the layout gets almost, dare I use the word: 'ergonomic'.....? 
 Aha!  That makes perfect sense.  Good eye. 
 Well, it might if either the 4/3/2/1 and the 5/6/7/0 columns were in the
 same order.  ... but ... what's that 0 doing "after" the 7?  In short,
 I don't see it is vaguely appropriate for octal, either :) 
I don't much like 0 after 7, any more than I like 0 after 9 on a telephone dial
(or keypad for that matter).

But the layout above does give the digits 0 to 7 around a (non-circular) ring,
so I think it would work for octal.

I would have preferred either:

C  D  E  F
8  9  A  B
4  5  6  7
0  1  2  3

which is a good octal and hex keypad, or:

7  8  9  F
4  5  6  E
1  2  3  D
0  A  B  C

which incorporates the usual calculator pad.

Anyone else have preferred layouts?

Philip.