Technology

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.