[NTLK] Frankenkeyboard

[Bryan N Iotti]

Apperently, the German layout swapped out many of the punctuation keys to provide those letters... that's what made it of limited use to me.

If you look on Frank Gruendel's PDA-Soft page, he's got a German Newton Keyboard
http://www.pda-soft.de/KeyboardDisassembly02large.jpg

While here is a US one
http://img.blogdeblogs.com/tengounmac/uploads/2009/09/apple-newton-with-keyboard.jpg

If you confront those with the one I posted before, you'll see that most of the layout for mine is US, with some German keys to adapt to the different key position on the German case.

Bryan
On May 10, 2010, at 18:01 , Tim Kaluza wrote:

> Hi there,
> 
> I am German and using a american keyboard on a mac laptop. 
> 
> Actually there should be aother letter the ß. But it also doesn't seem to have an ä (ae) ö (oe) ü (ue), does it? 
> 
> All the best!
> Tim
> 
> Am 10.05.2010 um 17:52 schrieb Bryan N Iotti:
> 
>> ... or, how I converted a German MP keyboard to a US one, although with some peculiarities.
>> 
>> 
>> Here are the pictures to follow along 
>> http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/3971211/1//Newton?h=b1f586
>> 
>> So, it goes like this. I bought the keyboard via eBay from an Austrian seller, claiming it was new, unused. The moment after I pressed the "buy it now" button, I had a BFO: "But Apple made a German version of the keyboard, too... maybe this isn't US?"
>> 
>> Still, I waited for it to come in.
>> 
>> Sure enough, when it got here I realized that not only was it a German one, it had also been tampered with to put a Palm III connector on it (I always thought it was us trying to steal the stowaway keyboards, not the other way around).
>> 
>> Luckily I found an auction from Maple Ridge Sales for a set of US keys and a connector cable. Bought both and waited.
>> 
>> Today they were at my door, neatly packed. I set out to assemble the darn thing, hoping deep down that the layouts would be compatible. Turns out that they mostly are, except for the fact that there is an extra key if you convert a German keyboard to US: the top left key, in the picture carrying the ^ and °, is actually a § and±.
>> 
>> I had to use the German return key, using one and a half keys vertically instead of one and a half horizontally. That also moved the \ and | key down and left one slot.
>> 
>> The German left shift, running on a single key instead of the double key US one, freed a space that holds what used to be the traditional top left key,  ` and ~.
>> 
>> Just in case someone had a keyboard lying there, and was considering a layout switch.
>> 
>> Bryan
>> 
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> 
> 
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> ====================================================================