LGR Oddware - 1995 Big Keys "ABC" Keyboard
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 เม.ย. 2014
- Overview and demonstration of the unusual Mac and PC keyboard, the original Big Keys keyboard from Greystone Digital. And playing Duke Nukem 3D using the WASD setup with it, cuz it's absurd.
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That KB reminds me of the time I used to do tech support for Comcast. I talked to a customer who once asked me to help him with his keyboard. He said the buttons weren't typing the correct letters. I suggested he contact HP for his support cause I only trouble shoot internet connections but after talking to the guy a little longer, it became apparent to me that he pried his keys off and put them in alphabetical order. I told him that his computer doesn't know what is painted on the top of the keys! lol
psovegeta Jesus.
psovegeta haha that's hilarious!
This is the story of a man named Stanley. Stanley sat in his office all day, annoying his co--workers by pushing keys on his Big Keys keyboard.
Yelnates
@@BlakeKDM Yelnats
Dilbert joke.
um acktyually its the stanley parable
Teaching kids their ABCs, and that 0 comes after 9.
Wow I did not notice that till you pointed it out to me. I guess I'm used to 1-9, 0 on a keyboard.
so true...
That totally pissed me off while watching the video. Why did you mention that haha
Well you can think of it in another way... 0 represents the first spot of the next set up (ie in base 10, that would be going from 9 to 10) which is just as much important and maybe more important than 0 being a number by ittself. So 0 kinda represents going up a level. lol
I could be wrong but I think every 0 you add on to the end is the equivalent of multiplying the value by the current base.
examples:
base 10: 9 * 10 = 90
base 16: 0xF * 0x10 = 0xF0
sooo... all numbers can be represented by 1 to base and adding a 0 is the equivalent up multiplying it by base.
gopro_2027 I don’t think a kid would think of that...
Haha, I now notice that WASD was configured with A as moving forward. Whoops. Oh well, the point was to make it absurd, and that certainly was achieved :P
I thought I was crazy for a minute there. Phew
@.@ wasd for directions...A as forward?! even on qwerty that is caddy wumpus...
did well even with controls that bass-ackwards! :)
That's even more absurd than the keyboard!
Should have done a ESDF movement set up though. >:D
How have things been going for you, your channel seems to have grow alot since I first started watching your videos. Best luck,
Justin
Shuda used BKLM as WASD.
When he took that key off the keyboard, I was then very concerned for the remainder of the video if the zero was upside-down or not.
Mr Videos & Games suffering from OCD are we? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°), well welcome to the club
I think he put it in up side up
If you look at the 0 at the start of the video the print of it is centered towards the bottom of the key a bit
And i cant see any difference after he moved the key
Mr Videos & Games What have you done?
It started up-side-down. The rest of the keys are offset closer to the left side, the 0 is closer to the right.
@Google User did you seriously reply to a year old comment?
Screw WASD, we have BKLM.
BlacK Lives (don't) Matter?
Cancer Lives (don't) Matter
yass
On Colemak WASD turns into WARS.
CLMN, BKLM is for peasants !
When I was a kid I used to see one of those in the special education classroom. It was not just for little kids. We had a few people who could not type or move well and needed to use bigger keys.
I was thinking how ridiculous it was, but then realised its potential for people with a range of mental and physical difficulties. The vowels being colour coded yellow is helpful, I suppose they treated Y as an honorary vowel. For children, maybe it's not so helpful to learn on an abc layout then have to adapt to the standard qwerty, but that's open to debate. But my big concern about it, its fatal flaw, where are the damned punctuation keys?! That's what kills any potential it may have, for me. I appreciate that they're stripping it to the core basics of writing, but for whom is punctuation not at all necessary? If I were to design a keyboard like that, I'd opt to put all the punctuation keys somewhere in one neat row, perhaps running vertically to the left or right of the main keyboard, or maybe horizontally over towards the arrow keys. You don't have to make them as stand out keys, but do include them somehow. For any purpose, it's ridiculous having a keyboard which you cannot punctuate on.
I actually have physical limitations myself and I'm not sure that this would have helped me. In fact, I'm almost sure that it wouldn't and it might have actually made typing more of a pain since I can't just carry one of those ABC keyboards with me and I would have to learn how to type on a regular one anyway. That's just my 2 cents, anyone else could chime in here
@@HellonWheels777 there are countless ways to be disabled, and every disabled person has different needs. a keyboard like that might be a good fit for some people while being totally useless for others. i can definitely see big and colorful keys being helpful for some of my peers.
as a person with severe mobility and fatigue issues, i was looking at those big keys thinking they might be good for improving my keypress accuracy when i can barely control my hands, the bright colors on the keys good for helping me find the letters when my eyes can't focus well, and the sturdy build quality that would survive my clumsiness. (but ultimately the huge spread they'd require on a full keyboard would mean i'd spend too much time and energy trying to move my hand from key to key, effectively making it as useless as a standard keyboard for me. in my case, when i'm most symptomatic, speech-to-text software and a communication board is a better solution for my communication needs.)
The version they sell now has punctuation and other features to function like a full keyboard, and there's a QWERTY edition too. They mostly market them to people with visual and motor disabilities with less emphasis on young kids. They also created provision for you to be able to pull of the keys, rearrange, and re map them in whatever order you like. It's a really smart product for people that can't use typical keyboards.
we need to get someone to do a Dark Souls Lv. 1 run with this keyboard.
+dainxjac lol, that would be interesting
I bet the MLG Pro's use this keyboard for tournement matches of Teachers Typing and Typing of the Dead :O
how about sonic 06. the game thats rushed
Oh god yes. Someone call lobros
Don't think it would actually make a difference, you'd just remap the controls.
It's crazy to see a company that still makes basically the same product with the same design from back then.
+Rederister Cosplay! Look up Califone.
+MrEthan520 Anonymous I did. What was I supposed to find?
***** It's a company that has made stuff like this since the 80's.
It's great for them! It'd be reasonably cheap as R&D cost would be basically non-existent.
I volunteered with brain injury patients and we had these, very very nice to help these people.
the keys also correspond with colors... B is Blue, G is Green, R is Red, W is White, Y is Yellow.
mind blown
orange is yellow...
But "I" isn't Indigo...
aerial wheel And C is Cred.
I wanted an "ABC" keyboard so badly as a kid, but then I got a Basic grasp of they normal keyboard and there was no going back
Weirdly, I got a Sinclair BASIC grasp of it... the Spectrum coming along just at the right time as I was also starting to mess around bashing the keys on my mum's old portable typewriter... so each position wasn't just a letter but a programming keyword as well.
1994 = creator of Big keys founded
2014 = this vid made
20TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIG KEYS KEYBOARD MAKER
My primary school had these for a few years. They ended up going back to QWERTY because some kids couldn't type on the school laptops.
"Erm, here's my report"
Qeegkrog.
@@videotoblin Giidoisdoyasozionxp
Those look like ALPS keyswitches! Nice... especially since by that time the rubber-dome crapola was on the rise and you could never expect stellar manufacturing quality from "specialty" peripherals like this.
i would rather give a child a qwerty keyboard, imagine switching to a qwerty keyboard after using this for a long time or vice versa
Aaron When my sister was ca 2 years old she had one of those cheap sort of learning computer (i winnie pooh one) and it was an abc-keyboard. I also got one of those, but since i was 5 i had a different one with a qwertz-keyboard (qwertz is the standard in germany and other german speaking countries)
I once tried to use my sister's and it kinda fucked with my head using an abc-keyboard 😂
I think I could switch to this big keyboard easily since the order the keys come in is already memorized, but switching to qwerty from this keyboard would be really difficult if you weren't familiar with qwerty beforehand.
Hey Clint! Love the channel.
I didn't check the comments but if no one's mentioned it...
S-Video cables are direct substitutes for ADB cables. Back in the day I figured it out by accident, tried it and had longer cables with no adverse effects on the mouse or keyboard.
Keep up the great videos!
My first school had loads of these, I think they were used to control the lighting in our sports hall or something. We were never allowed to use them, I remember wanting to though because I used to touch it all the time and get told off for it.
Looking at the colours of the keys, I can deduce that "space" is a vowel! As is the direction "right". I did not know this.
Y is also a vowel!
@@glennhefel in the English language, Y actually can serve as a vowel, so that's on purpose.
Had a thought--Maybe the Big Keys connects between the stock Mac keyboard and the mouse?
It's time we rearranged the alphabet to match qwerty. You know it makes sense! Think of the children.
ESC,F1,F2,F3....
lol
The alphabet is in an arbitrary order anyways!
Propane than all software based on alphabetical ordering will break
Vitorruy1 like anyone cares
The pass through is probably not for the mouse, but a standard keyboard for the parents
and/or teachers...
mspenrice And if the ADB supports it, maybe one could plug the big keys into the Mac keyboard's mouse port so it can be further away from the screen or to not reach back when plugging it in.
I do like the arrow keys though. It would be cool to see that on an otherwise traditional keyboard.
i actually get excited every time an episode of oddware pops up.
Nice keyboard. Great review. Having to reach for the mouse made it very entertaining and funny.
Thanks :D
Nice to see a piece of Oddware still in production, I actually wouldn't buying a new WASD Big Keys keyboard with punctuation functions.
Love these oddware vids.
Duke Nukem 3D - ABC Difficulty. Dude, you nailed it.
1:26, "everything is completely out of order and weird". Alphabetical order! :D
I think the mechanical switches were the reason why these keyboards were so expensive. Also, in my own opinion, they should last longer than these rubber domed keyboards.
"Makes no frickging sense..." favorite quote of this video... Frick and Frig in one word?
I don't think it's a good idea. Children should learn how to print on a qwerty keyboard, or else they will have to relearn.
Yeah!
Well its also for people who cant use qwerty, but it does make sense to have kids learn qwerty. Instead of learning this instead.
You learn to type on a keyboard
It looks like it would be a good idea for kids with special needs. Partially blind children, children with hand-eye coordination problems, children with severe learning difficulties, low functioning autistic children etc. in fact, it would be great not just for children with special needs but also teenagers, young adults with special needs and older people with or without special needs.
I would definitely not market this towards a neurotypical child as they would have to relearn how to use a keyboard but for those with special needs, it would be perfect.
+Dishwasher Please Except for kids of age 2-5. They still learning the alphabet. If you tehn let them use a Qwerty keyboard that would be counter productive. Those toy laptops with games on them, if they have a proper keyboard ussually also have an abc layout.
aaahhh i love this channel and its really gotten about 9,000 times better since i started watching.It was even freakin awesome when i started watching, thanks bro
I've heard S-video cables can be used as a replacement for ADB cables. That might help you out, since you wanted an extention cord.
Everytime I look at the keyboard I read the word "SHIT" ._.
It's SHITty. huehuehue
Now you said that, that's all I can see on the keyboard!
Remap the WASD keys to be NOPE.
The "E" and "O" having the same color and touching really bothers me.
"I got keyboards of steel."
Funny thing is that back when the QWERTY layout was invented it was because people were typing too fast with the keys in the ABC layout and causing the typewriters to break.
They should use these keyboards for speedrunning videogames.
It wouldn't surprise me if anyone has actually tried...
It's probably so obscure that nobody would ever use it in a speedrun anyway. But I'd like to see someone try...
I've seen a guy play Overwatch with a microwave. Also with bananas
Colton Rushton Well someone used a gamecube fishing rod in a Melee turnament I would not be suprised if someone use this for a speedrun event.
CodeNameZ Or even in an FPS competition...
YESYESYES!!!!!!YEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSS!!
I bought an EZ EYES keyboard at Dollar Tree last year. It has a regular keyboard setup with yellow keys and BIG letters on them.
does it work well? typically the product 'as seen on TV' are crap
It installed and worked fine on my computer. The build quality and feel is similar to a budget $10-15 USB keyboard by Memorex or Dynex, cheap and plastic. The only cool feature I liked about it was that the yellow keys glow in the dark. If you find one for $1 at Dollar Tree go get it. It might come in handy for a backup keyboard or when you're drunk. :) But I wouldn't pay any more.
***** I seen them at Five Below..I was thinking the same thing with Clint's Big ABC KB here.
It's stuff like this that just made me become a Patreon for your show!
I'm sitting here giggling like a madman! Thank you for making my day
That yellow "O" is bothering me. All other keys have differently-colored keys surrounding them (horizontally and vertically), but the yellow "O" is directly below the yellow "E". It would have been better if it were red.
No, I'm not sure why I care about that so much.
all the vowels are yellow keys, it makes perfect sense
Asperger's makes enjoying Big Key Keyboards difficult. It's not your fault.
"By the power of Greystone! I have the oddware!!"
:D
Looking back, this thing looks like something you might find in a VR game nowadays.
It's a keyboard made for Duke Nukems just learning their ABC's or who have special needs...awwwwlllrigggght! :D
That is the neatest looking keyboard I ever saw,
how come this pc monitor at 8:42 is not flickering, while in some other videos, its like a disco party. is it because of the refresh rate of the monitor or is it about recording device?
Depends on your camera and monitor settings. I try to adjust both so that the sync more or less lines up.
Lundvalnaden camera scan rate is not the same scan rate as the monitor, that's why CRT monitors flicker more than LCD monitors
Lemon flavored Clorax bleach but... why
Thanks for the hilarity, and reminding me of the time I was owned all over the shop on Duke3D Mac edition.
I laughed too hard at you trying to play with it. Such an interesting keyboard. I love learning about all these odd little things you know of. : D
so it doesn't have RGB backlighting??? well no buy from me!
But is has something better! RGB painting!
The paint can be 16.8 million colors and change on the fly?
Not yet, there is a glitch in the paint that prevents the color from changing.
Haha I found you
Why is there no shift?
In communist North Carolina, keyboard shift you.
They could easily have fit a comma and full stop/period on that bottom line, too. They're amongst the first things you learn when putting sentences together after all. And maybe had ? and ! available by shifting them, even if no other punctuation (...ok, maybe apostrophes?) was provided and none of the numbers produced symbols when shifted.
Then again, no plus or minus, no currency symbol, and nothing that stands for divide (multiplication could at least use X). And in the modern world, no @ for emails (...we can probably forgo #).
So really it needs a shift key and either ,.?!+-$@/' transferred as the shifted forms of the number keys, or just five (shiftable) dedicated punctuation keys added. I suggest ,.?!' as the unshifted forms, and +-/$@ as the shifted, because the former are used in normal writing and the latter are more used with numbers (well, except the @, though that sees some use in shop-floor maths). There could even be a french style Shift Lock key to flip between them.
"Lemme find the mouze" LOL . Thanks for another awesome video. You sir are amazing
Cool video, hope you'll make more reviews like this
Only real gamers use this keyboard
"Those alien scum are gonna pay for shootin' up my ride... just as soon as I can find the fire button"
I think Oddware is why I subscribed in the first place. Love you man, ya big nerd!
Big Keys keyboard - For the authentic survival horror experience.
I would love to bust one of these out at a LAN party. I also think that this keyboard is meant to plug in to the existing keyboards ADB mouse port then you plug the mouse in to it.
I KNEW you were from NC!
Don't ask how, I'm totally not a stalker or anything.
I cannot imagine a true, practical use for this other than humor.
Dear lgr my name is austim after watching 2 hours of your youtube vids ive desided to restore my old 1996 pc in le garage thank u for inspirering me to like old things :)
Try playing QWOP with this
oh god no
is that the olympic running flash toy where you control the individual thighs and calves?
Kisu Panther Slow down there, satan
I can imagine SE4 with this.
Its already hard enough.
ABIJ
This must be the new keyboard for mac users.
It's awesome that you try all these weird peripherals on Duke Nukem!
Love the Adlib Gold music in the background :)
I saw this at a Goodwill once. I made fun of it and took a picture cause no one believed me about it.
I have one gripe with this keyboard
WHERE IS BACKSPACE?
It's the fourth from left grey button
*****
I didn't really notice that at first
*****
I'm not sure how important that distinction was for a Mac-Compatible, though, given that usually on a Macintosh (at least I think pre-OS X), the delete key WAS where the backspace key was, and functioned effectively the same as backspace.
It's the key labeled Del
@@MichaelSchiciano who is @*******
I like how this series is turning into "101 absurd ways to play Duke Nukem 3D".
Certainly an interesting design (though, it'd have been interesting to see if they had a QWERTY variant, and how it reacted).
I think I enjoyed the playing-Duke3D-with-a-crazy-input-setup more than anything though… totally needs to be part of future Oddware episodes you do :)
Fun fact: Another keyboard that's ABC instead of QWERTY is the keyboard of the POS terminals they use at Walmart.
I can't seem to find one. The IBM POS terminals they use are pretty common, and they're like TI calculators in that the alpha keys are in ABC instead of QWERTY. If you ever need to get them to scan an item without a barcode where they have to type in a description, it's miserable because it's in ABC.
YEEEEEEEEEESSSSS!!!!!!!!YES!YESY!ES!
Maybe you should have tried to use the mouse pedal style. I´m sure you´d be able to finish the level. Or maybe the cord didn´t reach the ground as well....
Funnily enough these things were probably never meant for use with a normal mouse, but some other similarly specialised piece of kit, including foot-activated pointers, that would of course have come with rather longer cables...
you have the best duke nukem impression i know of
I remember these in stores because I wanted one, as I was 8 years old when I saw them at Fry's. Awesome to see a review of a product I wanted but forgot about.
I'm looking for a new keyboard. How well does this work with fallout 4?
Yes, my bad. I'll use this keyboard to play Sonic '06 instead. That was a much better game than fallout 4.
OrangesmikyPro
About as well as Fallout 4 works on AMD components.
Doctor Mobius fallout 4 is a great game I duuno why so many people on youtube comment that.
Vitorruy1
It’s because Fallout 4 is a very bare-bones game and feels like they put the absolute minimum into it.
I pla FNV to this day and since I first played I notice it has a serious case o feature creep, there is a bunch of things in the game that absud majority of players never really use, there are just there for the saking of making the game look full o stuff but they have no meaningful contribution for the game strategy.
=D Eyyy!! We're from the same state! Have you had any of the legendary Cheerwine? I'd say it'd be a sin if you haven't! xD
I grew up on the stuff :)
xD That's awesome dude!
Dude I love Cheerwine! I first had it about four years ago at a local drive in movie theater here in central Indiana. My favorite cherry soda hands down! What a random comment on an older, unrelated video lol! BTW, LGR is the man!
awesome
I was born in Lumberton (about 30 minutes south of Fayetteville). I don't have much memories of Cheerwine (I was only 2 when I left to go live in Pennsylvania), but I remember just seeing a couple cans of it in our fridge from time to time.
Thinking about it, this would be useful for programs like Sibelius, where you use A-G in order to place musical notes.
We've got one of these at the school I work for! Ours is a USB windows one, and has this weird clear plastic plate on top as well that separates the keys. We have it in our ESE room, and it caught me super off guard when I went to work on the machine and saw that keyboard, haha. Those switches are pretty nice feeling too!
How exactly do they justify a price point that high? Is it just because it has mechanical switches?
Low volume of units produced, not many competitors, specialized usage for education and therapy, industrial applications, mechanical switches, high-quality build overall... the price kinda makes sense!
But mainly the lack of competition and limited production runs ;)
I'm starting to think they intended you to plug the original keyboard into the back of the plug on this one, rather than plug the mouse into that. Then you'd have the ouse on the actual regular KB, which is hat the adult/teacher or whatever would use when this one was set aside.
Great video! I would like to see more oddware!
I tried to pay attention to the video, but for the longest while I couldn't remember what the music was from! I just now remembered it was The Rhythm of Industries by Henri Chalifour on the Ad-lib! Awesome track!
wait wait, no backspace?!?!
It's the key labeled Del
You should do a video on Unicomp keyboards.
I love the sound of the key strokes.
wow, you're from NC? I'm from NC! It's always really fun to find out you're from the same state as someone when you're watching a video haha
5 years ago i always thought it was stupid how keyboards where not in abc
you mean like when you were 5 you have roblox pic XD
Roblox?
i see alot of false information here. Ill just say this: The QWERTY keyboard. If you notice, the letter you type most are in the middle of the keyboard and the less used are on the outerside. I dont remember the whole story about the ABC keyboard, but Apple tried to bring back the ABC keyboard but then realised it was too later since over 150million QWERTY keyboards have been shipped
Also, they're about evenly divided between left and right, with letter pairs that are commonly typed together being separated so you enter them with different hands. The overall flow of key usage bounces fairly steadily between left and right.
I love that you showed the Muppet Keyboard! My elementary school was the first in our area of Oregon to get a computer lab and they had Apple II, Muppet keyboards and Koala pads! Lol
The full keyboard connects to the Mac, the big keys plugs into the full keyboard, and the mouse connects to that. Otherwise, you can't do everything you need.
$160 dollars today. So much much cheaper today for their LX QWERTY model.
EDIT: 1995 $150 is equal to $235 in 2016. Inflation is a bitch.
THE SPACE BAR HAS NO STABILIZERS that is why it sucks
That or they cleaned it and put it in wrong. You have to be very careful with the stabilizers on large keys when putting them back in, first clip them into the right brackets on the key, then make sure it hooks onto the keyboard when you press it down.
I love the AudioTriX music playing in the background.
Oh my gosh, I had one of these! I had a problem learning typing when I was a kid and this was one of the things that I used. I think mine was one with punctuation, though.
Why is learning the alphabet so "important" anyway
Mars Violet Other than learning all the letters, so you can put things in alphabetical order? I never really thought about it before.
Ked Viper Hmm.... maybe alphabetical ordering. Not learning all letters though. I knew all letters far before I even learned the alphabet, because of curiosity.
Mars Violet if you don't want to learn the alphabet there's always Reddit.
hmm, that color theme looks terrible at first.. but then... it is kind of smart...
+Edvard Hansson care to elaborate, I'm having trouble seeing it myself. ^^; I did notice the vowels are all in yellow which is nice, the rest of the colours make no sense to me I'm afraid.
+Ash the Raccoon hehe! well, for kids it is great for them to learn how to type on a keyboard! maybe also for some adults. Colorcoding makes pattern recognition so much easier. There are some application based keyboards with color layouts, for example the pro tools keyboard. I hope future keyboards will be cheaper with them OLED displays for custom layouts.
Edvard Hansson welp, that wouldn’t help anyone considering it’s not a QWERTY or DVORAK.
I'm a sucker for big colorful buttons. I would have loved this as a kid.
Wow it has a drone mode in the top right corner next to Options. They were really looking into the future with this one.