I picked up a keyboard for a Wyse terminal at a flea market the other
day. When I tried some of the keys, they couldn't be depressed.
I thought, at first, some dirt or debris had gotten stuck there, but on
closer look I saw something black below the keys that seemed to be
stuck. I pulled a key cap off and found a U shaped piece of black
plastic that was put there on purpose to prevent you from depressing the
key.
The question came to mind; "What sort of application would be so crude
that you would have to prevent the user from depressing certain keys?"
One of the keys was a Break key, which sort of made sense to me, because
it would halt a PDP-11 if that was the host machine.
This was the first time I had ever seen this kind of thing, was this
common long ago?
- [cctalk] Keyboard Blockers? Douglas Taylor via cctalk
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