In the useless toys category...

[khaosworks]

I give you Typewriter Keyboard, a Mac OS X shareware application that makes your keyboard do typewriting sounds when you strike the keys.

It's a small thing, but it makes me somehow feel, when I'm writing, that I'm writing, y'know?

Now, if only I could find some way to make the keys look like that on an old Smith-Corona, like Spider Jerusalem's...

Comments

[mdlbear]

Alternatively, you could go out and buy an old, surplus IBM Model M, which is basically the keyboard from the IBM Selectric.

[madfilkentist]

What's really impressive is that "It doesn't need any installation which makes it very easy to use." Must be a Sony product. :)

[cfred.livejournal.com]

I wish I could remember where I saw it, but somewhere on the net, somebody posted the proces of turning their old manual typewriter into a computer keyboard.

[amezri.livejournal.com]

I found a conversion here -- maybe this is what you were thinking of?

[cfred.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's what I'd seen before!

(And myself, personally, I sometimes miss the feel of the IBM 3270 terminal keyboards. The ones that would turn keyclack on when the terminal got thrown an error message. I always was fond of that form of user feedback, somehow.)

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Were those the ones where you could turn the keyclack on manually by pushing a button? We had those at a school district where I worked...in the early 1990s. (They were also still using a mainframe to crunch standardized test scores.)

[cfred.livejournal.com]

Yep. That would invert the setting: no keyclack when the terminal threw an error.

I'm not surprised they were using those; my HS system's bus route planners were using a VAX mainframe in 1988. Now, when I worked in a nonprofit's office and they had original IBM PC's, with cassette ports, in 1993, that was a little scary.

clicky clicky

[marmota.livejournal.com]

Hey, if someone made a usb keyboard in the shape of an old Corona, I'd get one! (Er, provided it was in the price range of other keyboards.) It's sad that the keyboard market caters more to swoopy pseudo-futuristic design than to retro. Closest thing to retro in that market is the classic battleship grade IBM Model-Ms, with a buckling spring keyclick on both press and return that would resound throughout an entire office and metal case suitable for melee combat.

Oh, googling around a bit on the subject, I turned up this and this. So, there is a market out there for it. Emphasis, however, on the 'out there'.

Re: clicky clicky

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

What I'd really love is an integrated iMac-like machine in the shape of an old Smith-Corona, with a screen where the paper would have been. I've always been fascinated with the idea of mixing high technology and old design. Just because you're technologically advanced doesn't mean you have to give up classic style.

Re: clicky clicky

[osj.livejournal.com]

Like Brazil!

[osj.livejournal.com]

Cool. But it would be better if it could be set to activate only with certain applications, e.g. your word processor, or better still, only to activate when typing text into a document, as opposed to keyboard shortcuts. The 'Command' key shouldn't make a sound, and any key pressed while the 'Command' key is depressed also shouldn't make a sound. Doesn't 'fit' when doing finder operations.

I know, I know...nit-picking.

[susanscookietin.livejournal.com]

I apologise for interrupting this very interesting conversation, but being a woman as I am, please allow me to make a quick remark, that I was rather more impressed with this inventor's dedication to relieve his wife's repetitive stress problems in her fingers and wrists, by building this sci-fic looking machine, than the machine itself. Okay, back to the technicalities, ladies and gentlemen.