On Sun, 14 Oct 2012, mc68010 wrote:
This is pretty funny. A fool and their money...
Luckily they waited
until it was on sale for $435.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/251168153005
Indeed. The question remains though, is someone foolish enough to pay
$50.00 or more for it today, and especially in its current nonfunctional
condition?
From the looks of it, the keyboard itself appears to be
a cheap Mitsumi or
similar that has simply been placed inside a wooden
"sandwich". It is
almost certainly one of the cheaper variety given the size reduced right
shift key next to where they relocated the backslash key.
With the 5-pin DIN AT style plug, it predates the AT->ATX transition, but
since it has the "Windows" keys I'd guess it likely dates from about
1996-1998 or thereabouts. Keyboards that had AT style plugs in combination
with the Windows keys were really only seen in the mainstream marketplace
for 2-3 years or so after the release of Windows 95 and before ATX got a
foothold along with the release of Windows 98 and the Pentium II going
mainstream (after the mini-DIN became the norm, existing keyboards that
used the 5-pin DIN were dumped on the surplus market for /cheap/). Because
it has black key tops, it /probably/ dates towards the end of the Socket 7
era because up to that point beige was the predominant color for keyboards
and computer accessories marketed towards general consumers. In fact,
since the serial number starts with '98-', possibly pointing towards 1998,
this seems to fit perfectly.
But "missing one or two keys in the lower left corner" ...the thing is
missing the left shift key(!) which makes it pretty much worthless. :)