Notices by Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)

@wolff I've not looked into how the copilot key works, sorry.

@smh already done so.

this means the software itself doesn't ever refer to the buttons (besides the fact that not all installations used the custom keyboards: you could use regular wyse terminals just fine), it just refers to SO=Start Over

The way these keys seem to work is they just type some commands you could always type. So like the Start Over button (which is the one I'm most sure of) just types SO, which is a Dynix shortcut for Start Over

@mherbert I don't think there are different firmwares? The keyboard has no firmware, and I don't think they modified the firmware for the terminal itself, but maybe. I'll keep an eye out for Dynix firmwares

my best guess is that among the 4 special buttons, there's
1. New Search
2. Start Over
3. Help

but what order? what's the 4th? no idea. I have done so much research on this one silly little thing.

there's other pictures of these specific keyboards online... and they're all taken from angles were you can't see the special keys

there's a lot of information about the past I'm always searching for (I'm an archivist!) but this is the closest to being available some simple information has been without being findable.

and there's a keyboard-enthusiast thread somewhere where the user is like "hey where do these keyboards come from? $shoppinglink" and another user goes "oh those are dynix-branded wyse keyboards!" and the internet archive didn't capture the link :(

one of my most annoying research projects is "what are the special keys on a dynix-branded WYSE terminal keyboard". The book mentions you can get Dynix keyboards with special keys, but doesn't describe them. I've gone through old online guides, which don't tell you the keys, and THIS PICTURE of dynix has them MERE CENTIMETERS out of shot.

@diedofheartbreak (the worst part is that NONE of them have the special Dynix-branded keyboard that was used with those)

@diedofheartbreak guess why I want one?

my guess is that people selling these things are just searching ebay to see how much they sell for and they're all sniffing each others farts. Every person with a broken terminal is like "see? ebay says they're 200$" and those aren't selling.

at the same time as all the 250$ broken ones (which often have another 100$ of shipping on them, which is Very Justified (IT'S A CRT FROM THE 80s: DO NOT SHIP IT CHEAPLY)), someone will be selling one for 200$ OBO but it's got a functional screen and an included keyboard.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/166998811933

yet again I'm looking at something I want on ebay and going "why are these so expensive? no one wants this!"

Wyse terminals are all listed for like 200$-300$ on ebay. I don't really know WHY. They're not special in some way that other dumb terminals aren't, and half of these are missing keyboards (useless!) and/or have obvious deflection problems (at least one of them was shown TURNED ON while having failed deflection, which will damage it)

this one is on ebay. They want 200$ for a terminal with that much burn in, they don't even know if it works, and they don't have the matching keyboard (and wyse keyboards are model-specific)

I think this screen might have had a LITTLE bit of use in the past.

@eigen sorry, no, I don't know off the top of my head.

@puppygirlhornypost2 oh yeah I saw that on tumblr! great post.