A colleague has just come into possession of a large number of IBM PC 3270 keyboards (don't ask!). These keyboards have a number of very interesting looking keys, but the one that most intrigued us is the one at the bottom right of the block illustrated here:
In the absence of knowing its purpose, we've nicknamed it the "person in a wheelchair being chased down a hill by a boulder" key. We are relatively confident, however, that this isn't its actual name.
Any PC/mainframe history buffs able to help us out?
Answer
I do know the symbol on the bottom right key as being the symbol typically used when proofreading written documents. It is a delete. When you write that over a letter or word in a paper, it indicates that it is unneeded and should be removed. Seeing as how this is an older keyboard, the users of the equipment at the time likely would be very familiar with proofreading symbols and understand what it represents.
My guess (without having used the machine in question) is that it likely is the delete key.
This page goes through a history of some IBM keyboard layouts, and a few pages down you see this image:
You can see the key layout in your screenshot above the arrow keys. The key layout is:
Dup/PA1 FM/PA2 PA3
Back Tab Insert Delete
The delete mark on the key makes sense, especially combined with the proof-reading mark also used for "insert".
No comments:
Post a Comment