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Indentifying PB Duo keyboards - revision F?
Posted by: Byrd on 2009-03-13 16:12:42
Hi,

does anyone know the part number of a PB Duo "revision F" keyboard? The keyboard on my newly acquired 2300c is making my fingers get toned muscles as I have to press down so firmly on the keys to get it to register, I suspect the 2300c is an upgraded older model. Would love to know the part number so I can go looking.

Thanks

JB
Posted by: beachycove on 2009-03-13 18:28:17
You might first check the one you have, as working Revision Fs are not that much better than working earlier revisions, to be perfectly honest. Revision Fs simply have an F on the part number sticker underneath. You can't miss it.

The three good Duo keyboards I have (a revision D, E and F as I recall) improved a good deal with use, and softened up, basically, after I had typed away on them for a while. It maybe took a couple of hours. While none of them to this day are what you would call a pleasure to use, they do the business. I recently wrote 50-60pp. of closely spaced text on a 270c with the D keyboard.

I started writing on manual typewriters in the late 70s and early 80s, and the Duo keyboards, to my mind, resemble such a typewriter in action, in the sense that they require a purposeful strike rather than a caress to function. Those who have written pages and pages on good quality manual typewriters would not find a working Duo keyboard to be terribly alien.

The current crop of Apple keyboards, which a person could almost write on by farting at or in their general direction from across a room, are another matter altogether. I make about the same number of mistakes at work on my 2008 iMac keyboard (because it is so sensitive) as I do on a Duo.

All of this is fresh in my head: I was writing something briefly on my 2300c with Revision F a mere 5 mins before reading your post, and thinking that one of its limitations is not the keyboard action so much, which I have learned to live with, as the fact that the keyboard action makes mistakes every three lines or so more or less inevitable.
Posted by: Byrd on 2009-03-15 04:51:51
Thanks muchly Mr. Beachy.

I'll hold onto what I have - the fact it works fine, as does the Duo 2300c is what I should be caring about. Just put in a 10GB disk (without checking if it was an ATA6 incompatible drive), and it's booting OS 8.6 happily on 44MB physical RAM.

I have to say the finest keyboard I've encountered on an Apple portable would be that of an Aluminium Powerbook - on a 12" subnotebook form factor, of course 🙂 They're my favourite models to collect - Apple subnotebooks - one day, a MBA ...

JB
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