Asklemmy

43993 readers

1660 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Were zx spectrum +2 keyboards disgusting to type on? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Out of curiosity, I've been watching a few restorations of those spectrums, and I've noticed the keyboards having a rather peculiar construction, judging by today's standards. They have 2 springs, the small one, as far as I understand, presses the membrane layers together, and the larger one returns the key into neutral position once the key is released.

I personally haven't used any spectrums, yet I've encountered the very same construction on a keyboard of a Russian clone of said machines (namely, zx atas), and to this day I haven't touched anything worse... The only way I can describe it is like trying to type on a piece of raw meat.

So, if anyone here had a chance to type on the original spectrums, was it this bad? I suspect otherwise since I haven't heard of crowds of people requesting PTSD treatment, but the whole thing still somewhat bothers me 😅

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I had a ZX Spectrum + and the keyboard was pretty decent was much better than the rubber of the normal one. The Sinclair ZX81 probably takes the cake for worst overall as it was just a very thin membrane.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

The ZX81 wasn't too terrible, and I was also using Apple ][ systems at school at the same time. I think the worst part was the small size, but at least it still had a slight amount of feedback, and you could actually navigate it at a decent speed. Personally I would rate the idea of typing on a phone screen as the absolute worst thing I've ever tried to use.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I had the ZX80. It was terrible.