this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
531 points (97.8% liked)
Technology
59596 readers
3798 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
More "retro hardware" enthusiasts.
From a keyboard perspective? Cherry Blues are too mainstream. Everyone now needs one of those god awful ibm keyboards from the 70s (?). Because how can you type a screenplay if people in the Starbucks three towns over can't hear you?
But that has mostly manifested as switch modding and new designs. Because ergonomics and layout matter a lot too. I mean. how can you get anything done if you aren't rocking at least TKL?
But there are people who have access to older hardware. Either because they had it in the basement for 30 years or because they got gouged on ebay. But the USB->PS/2 adapters have been on the market basically forever. Not in huge quantities but they are also dirt cheap to make so more or less any store that sells "electronics" has a few collecting dust.
But it also more or less has the same problem facing "retro" consoles. Old "indestructible" NESes are... mostly dead. It is increasingly hard to find working models and a lot of those end up getting torn apart for parts. It is why we are seeing a growing acceptance of emulator runs in the speedrun community and a push to "vet" the FPGA solutions.
And same with the classic typewriter style keyboards. A lot of them just have broken switches or damaged electronics from decades of cigarette smoke and so forth and are parted out or completely unsalvageable.
That caused a flashback, as I haven't seen those in years (but I know I have a few still somewhere lol). It also made me think...I can not recall ever having to do the "1-2-3" tries when hooking a USB mouse or keyboard into those before I plugged it all into the back of the PC. Which makes me lean towards blaming the socket installation and lack of reference for a lot of the woes, not the cord or flashdrive (which you can see).