After years of sitting in storage, my deadbeat ex-housemate’s old Symbolics XL1200 Lisp Machine has found a new home: HackLabTO, located in Accordion City’s Kensington Market neighbourhood. I thought I’d post a couple of pictures of its keyboard, which is a little different from the ones we see every day.
The keyboard is bristling with modifier keys. Yes, we’ve all got shift and control, but most of us don’t have hyper, super, and meta keys. I have a guess as to what the network and local keys do.
Well before the Sony Playstation, Lisp machines had square”, “circle” and “triangle” keys:
And here’s a look at the right side of the keyboard. Today’s keyboards have an auto-repeat feature, which made the repeat key obsolete: