Hail Mary question here, in case someone somewhere knows something:

In the late 90s, I lived in the UK in Hampshire. One weekend, I went to a local computer show in Portsmouth or Southampton. You know, a few tables in a community center with people selling all kinds of computer bits.

A small UK company had a booth there and sold a really interesting keyboard. It might have been the manufacturer, or a local importer. I don’t remember. But the keyboard had a UK layout. I bought one.

The keyboard was a folding full-size beige 102-key mechanical keyboard with a chunky coiled cable and an AT interface. It was built like a tank and had really good clicky switches. Basically imagine a slightly lighter model-M sawed in two with a mechanical hinge in the middle, allowing the keyboard to fold in two, with the keys on the inside facing each other.

It was a great keyboard, and while it didn’t fold into a particularly compact package and wasn’t light by any stretch of the imagination, it fit great in a small suitcase and protected itself naturally by sandwiching the keys in the middle. And it folded with a loud, satisfying clunk 🙂

I loved that keyboard, but I lost it in a move 20 years ago. I’ve been trying to find out who made it and what it was for years, but I was never able to find anything at all. The only hits that come up when I search for folding mechanical keyboards are those awful miniature battery-powered bluetooth keyboards for cellphones.

Does anybody know what that keyboard might have been?

    • @ExtremeDullardOP
      9•10 months ago

      Yes! That’s exactly the one! You’re a genius!

      Now to find me a used one with a US ANSI layout… 🙂

        • @ExtremeDullardOP
          6•10 months ago

          You know, I wish you hadn’t told me that. I was enjoying the thought of a fellow human being blessed with a phenomenal memory having found what I had been looking for for years in a matter of minutes.

          Instead, I’m reminded that we’re entering an age where no effort is required to come up with anything, and also that I really should pay close attention never to reveal any personal information in anything I put out on the internet - even more attention than I already pay - because AI will immediately swallow it without my consent.

          Yes, it is a miracle indeed - a sad technological miracle, instead of a happy human one.

          But thanks all the same 🙂

          • @sturlabragason@lemmy.world
            4•10 months ago

            I have almost the exact opposite view.

            I really like that much like a calculator or a very sophisticated search engine we can use large language models (LLMs) to enhance our cognitive capabilities. My memory works in such a way that I would be completely useless without a search engine, while I have almost unlimited capacity when it comes to puzzling together LLMs and search queries. I don’t feel that it takes anything away from humans, it’s just a tool like any other that allows us to expand our capabilities, just in a cognitive capacity!

            I would have never ever been able to figure out what that keyboard was called, but just by squeezing the answer out of a model that has obviously been trained on that data, we were able to figure out the answer.

            If it were to have been done by purely human memory, we would have had to have a person that actually knew this bit of super obscure knowledge and the same person by some amazing chance reading this post.

            I see no sadness, just a tool that is globally available to almost anyone (25 USD month for GPT4 or perhaps anyone being able to run their own open-source miqu-1–70b from mistral.ai) and has the capacity to elevate human cognition, simply by adopting a mindset of directing an LLM to get the results we need, much like typing a query into a search engine.

            • @ExtremeDullardOP
              2•10 months ago

              I see no sadness, just a tool that is globally available to almost anyone […] and has the capacity to elevate human cognition

              Kind of off-topic, but I’m genuinely curious: how old are you if I might ask?

              I’m a gen-Xer myself, and I see AI as one of the greatest advances for mankind that could have been, that is quickly being turned into a tool of utter social devastation by greedy capitalist psychopaths, putting profits before all, putting people out of a job, pushing them into poverty while widening the already obscene inequality gap between ordinary working Joes and the ultra-billionnaires. My own prediction is that all of this will end badly, and blood will be shed when enough people are unable to feed their families because AI has rendered their jobs obsolete.

              All I see in AI is sad times ahead, that will pass eventually and probably lead to a better life for everybody, but not before I’m long dead and a lot of people of today have suffered greatly because of it.

              But here’s the thing: whenever I discuss AI with friends and coworkers, I’m always shocked by the disconnect between people my age and people even only 15 years younger: younger folks genuinely seem to think it’s a great time to be alive, to be part of the brave new AI world, and they genuinely can’t wait to be part of it. And all I can think of - I and people my age alike - is “How can they not see what’s unfolding?”

              That’s why I’m curious what age you are. If I was to guess, I’d say you’re under 40. Did I guess right? 🙂

              Ultimately it doesn’t matter though: either we older folks are right and the great disaster is coming, or we’re wrong and we’ll look like fools - and we’ll probably end up just as clueless about new technologies as our grandparents were with computers. Either way, whatever must happen will happen…

                • @ExtremeDullardOP
                  2•10 months ago

                  You don’t sound much more hopeful than I am in all honesty, and almost as cynical about where society is headed 🙂 The only difference is, I don’t wish the good guys win because I think they’ve already lost, and the revolution will not be digital but will happen with real guns and real blood one day.

                  As for cryptocurrencies… don’t get me started: I’ve always known it was a wide-eyed fool’s errand at best, and a pyramid scheme variant at worst, even when it was only Bitcoin and it was worth a fraction of a cent per. In fact - silly me - I even built a mining rig sometime around 2009 or 2010, since people were starting to talk about it. You known, just a PC doing that 24/7. I mined a bunch of Bitcoins for a couple of weeks, then got bored and repurposed the machine to do something more useful with the electricity it burned. I would never have though those pointless Bitcoins would fetch a single dollar a piece, let alone 50 thousand or whatever it was at the peak of the bubble. I kind of wish I hadn’t wiped the hard disk in retrospect 🙂 But hindsight is always 20/20. Still, I never regretted not taking part in that gigantic idiocy.

                  Anyhoos, I guess we’ll see how things turn out. I have kids too and they’re all grown up and out of college, and landed cushy jobs, so I’m not too worried for them. As for me, I’m old enough that I’m reasonably hopeful that if things turn sour, it’ll be after I’m gone. I’ve already enjoyed the good times, so I can’t complain really.

  • OtterEnglish
    1•10 months ago

    That sounds really cool! This likely doesn’t answer your question, but I found some things while googling that might be of interest to you / others seeing this post.

    While looking for any old foldable keyboards with a UK layout, I found this company and their website looked outdated (footer last updated in 2011?): https://matias.ca/foldingkeyboard/

    On their about page:

    Matias began in 1989, in Edgar Matias’ parents’ basement, in a suburb of Toronto. Since that time, it has survived the dot-com boom & bust, the Great Recession, and every other manner of calamity.

    The two main co-founders (Edgar Matias and Steve McGowan) have grown it into a globally recognized brand, known for high quality and […]

    Matias has also gained a reputation for “rescuing” lost technologies, the most famous example being the ALPS mechanical keyswitches in its award-winning Tactile Pro Keyboards.

    I also found this article/video from the CBC archives from 33 years ago, about how Edgar was trying to make a better one-handed keyboard: https://www.cbc.ca/archives/one-handed-keyboard-1991-1.5902406

    Since their website looked outdated I went looking to see if the company died, but it turn out they ARE still alive, and not only that, but they were at CES this year!

    This week at CES, Matias debuted a whole new line of keyboards and mice for fans of wireless USB‑C — and they all connect to the world’s smallest wireless receiver for USB‑C, a first for the industry

    Link: https://matias.ca/wireless-usbc/pr/PR - Matias Wireless USB-C.pdf

    Cool that they are still doing stuff :)

    • OtterEnglish
      1•10 months ago

      Again sorry this doesn’t answer your question, I looked through their products and didn’t spot something matching what you described. This is more just me sharing something cool I learned.

      Although, if the company was working on similar things way back then, maybe they might be able to lead you in the right direction if you got in touch :)

      Refreshed the page and saw others got the right one! Enjoy the story anyways 😄