Here's a weird question: so Dynix made a text-based library catalog system that used Wyse terminals, and they shipped them with custom keyboards. They had four keys above the numpad: one of these keys was Start Over/New Search.
Does anyone remember having used these terminals, and recall what those other keys were?
@thatdawnperson@foone@Canageek Ye gods! Keep in mind that you're asking me to trawl deep into ancestral memory here. As I recall, these were not off-the-shelf Wyse keyboards. Dynix worked with Wyse to create custom keyboards tailored specifically for their system. Besides the Start Over/New Search, there was also Help, Cancel, and Exit. The function keys also had custom function key caps, for both public and staff terminals. I remember some being colour-coded. Again, this is a long time ago.
@thatdawnperson@foone@Canageek I just spent way too much time going back through various Web sites, looking for pictures or these Wyse 30, 50, and 60 keyboards. All I found is that everybody uses exactly the same pictures, usually with the num pad cut off, which isn't much help. Maybe I should ask some of the actual librarians who trained on these things.
And I've looked through all the pictures I can find of it and they're all like this: showing the keyboard, but cropped before you can see the buttons on the right.
Here's a picture of the keyboard from a non-Dynix Wyse WY-30 terminal: you can see there's 4 function keys on top of the numpad. Those were customized for the Dynix version.
@foone I’m guessing this is something you would have checked already, but are there manuals for the software? if there are, maybe the manual shows what the other buttons are (or at least mentions them?)
@pearl yeah, sadly none of the manuals I can find list the keyboards. They were optional, so they probably came with some documentation, but I don't have it
@foone@pearl The manuals I could find said that you could put macros on the F keys (and that most users did) but didn’t suggest which functions for them. Funny, it makes me wonder if it was a default template or just for a particular installation that had that sticker on the fkey legend board
@foone The Abq/Bernallio county library system used these.
I never encountered the custom keys because the terminals all had the stock Wyse keyboards. That was then moved to some web-based system that sucked :peach: but could be stumbled through.
@foone I remember using something like this! I don't know if it was this exact system though.
I was thinking about this style of menu system a couple of weeks ago. This is what I want search engines to look like. I was considering writing my own text interface for them. (How hard could it be?)