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RAVEKEY.TXT
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2006-10-19
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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LIMA NEWSLETTER MARCH 1991
^^^^^ THE ORIGINAL SOURCE OF THE 105 KEY RAVE
^^^^^^^^^^^^^KEYBOARD FOR THE 99/4A
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^by Charles Good
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Lima Ohio User Group
Rave now sells a 101 key AT style keyboard for use with
the 99/4a. A couple of years ago, RAVE sold a different 105
key keyboard for the 99/4A which was unlike anything I have
seen on other modern computers. I own one of these 105 key
keyboards and published a review of this product in the
November 1988 issue of BB&&P. This keyboard has a number of
strange keys (the "Enhance" key for example) and the
function keys are engraved with specific word processing
functions that do not correspond to TI Writer. I have often
wondered where RAVE got this apparently dedicated keyboard.
Now I know!^^I spotted a picture of this keyboard as part of
a BYTE review of the EAGLE PC. The review is by Tom Wadlow
and appears on pages 236-242 of the March 1984 issue of
BYTE. Quoted below are the specific parts of the Wadlow
review that refer to the Eagle's keyboard:
"My biggest complaint about the Eagle concerns the
keyboard. The keyboard is the means by which you
communicate with your computer. the better you can do that,
the better you can use your computer. I am a touch typist
and have used dozens of keyboards, both professionally and
personally, over several years. These days, I move quite
easily between my home IBM keyboard (with its accursed shift
and Backspace keys) and a Lisp machine keyboard at work
(which has seven different kinds of shift keys, any
combination of which can be, and often is, used with a
single character). As you can see, I am used to dealing
with a variety of often quite peculiar keyboards.
"The Eagle keyboard certainly qualifies as peculiar.
While the alphanumeric keys are laid out more traditionally
than on the IBM keyboard, they are not as widely spaced. My
left hand always found the proper Home keys, but my right
hand invariably went one key too far to the right. The
Eagle keys have a mushy feel, with very little tactile
feedback. This is fine if you just want to hit a key or
two, but with extensive typing or word processing, it
becomes quite bothersome.
"There are some serious errors in the layout of the
other keys. My particular favorite is the way the cursor
control keys are laid out. The IBM PC places cursor control
on the 2-4-6-8 keys of its numeric keypad. This layout is
satisfactory, unless you want to enter numbers and move the
cursor at the same time, which is not uncommon. Eagle chose
to remove the cursor control keys from the numeric pad and
place them between the Enter key and the numbers. So there,
in a vertical column, you have Up, Right, and Down. The
Backspace key does double duty as Left, but you have to type
Shift-Backspace to get the proper Left code. This layout is
not very intuitive, not to mention being somewhat
uncomfortable, and you spend a lot of time rubbing out
characters every time you want to move left.
"A little experimentation produced the undocumented
fact that the 2-4-6-8 keys on the number pad do produce
cursor control codes when shifted. Unfortunately, neither
the Shift-Lock nor the Alpha-Lock keys affect the number
keys at all, so you must always hold down a Shift key to use
this feature.
"Many of the function keys are labeled with functions
for one or more of the Eagle applications programs. For
example, hitting the function key labeled Files in
Eagle-Calc displays a directory of the current disk. while
I have nothing against this per se, it seems to me that a
general purpose keyboard and a nice set of cardboard
overlays would save us all the trouble of explaining to a
novice why the Files key doesn't work with dBASE II or some
other non-Eagle product.
"Eagle does have one special key that I do like a great
deal- the Help key. And it does exactly what you would
expect it to when you use it with Eagle software.
"Unlike the IBM keyboard, the Eagle keyboard has
mechanically locked Shift-Lock and Alpha-lock keys that
actually give some indication of the state of the keyboard.
It is just a hint, though, since a program can set these
locks in software. Thus, under some all too frequent
circumstances, the actions of the two lock keys can be
reversed, so that lowercase can be achieved only by keeping
the Shift-Lock down. [I ran into this problem a couple of
times on my RAVE keyboard, and it is very disturbing. CG]
"The keyboard has lots of other peculiarities, such as
the numeric keypad with convenient Plus, Minus, and Times
keys, but no Divide. Or the Enhance key, which is as big as
the Enter key and takes up a space that would be a pretty
good location for a correctly configured set of cursor
control keys. Enhance is used only in Eagle-Writer, and I
really had to dig in the manual to find out where. But the
major peculiarity of this keyboard is that it exists at all.
Several companies are making good money selling properly
designed keyboards for the IBM PC. If Eagle has simply
chosen one of those keyboards, it would be in a very
enviable position compared to the IBM PC. Perhaps the "Not
invented here" syndrome isn't limited to IBM [or TI...CG].
As Eagle's keyboard exists today, the only people that will
benefit by its presence are the companies that sell Eagle
compatible replacement boards."
I don't think the Eagle computer sold well, especially
after the above review was originally published. You don't
read much about Eagle in the literature. It looks like RAVE
picked up surplus Eagle keyboards and sold them to 99ers.
About a year ago I removed my 105 key RAVE keyboard and
reinstalled the original gray plastic keyboard that came
with my console. I did this for several reasons, not the
least of which is the mushy feel of the RAVE 105 key
keyboard. Having used the EAGLE/RAVE keyboard for two
years, I can agree with all the comments quoted above. I
like my original TI keyboard better.
.PL 1