6mo ago

Were zx spectrum +2 keyboards disgusting to type on?

Out of curiosity, I've been watching a few restorations of those spectrums, and I've noticed the keyboards having a rather peculiar construction, judging by today's standards. They have 2 springs, the small one, as far as I understand, presses the membrane layers together, and the larger one returns the key into neutral position once the key is released.

I personally haven't used any spectrums, yet I've encountered the very same construction on a keyboard of a Russian clone of said machines (namely, zx atas), and to this day I haven't touched anything worse... The only way I can describe it is like trying to type on a piece of raw meat.

So, if anyone here had a chance to type on the original spectrums, was it this bad? I suspect otherwise since I haven't heard of crowds of people requesting PTSD treatment, but the whole thing still somewhat bothers me 😅

10 comments

I had a +3. At the time it was much better than rubber 48K keys.
If you are expecting cherry mx switches, you will be disappointed.

I had a ZX Spectrum + and the keyboard was pretty decent was much better than the rubber of the normal one. The Sinclair ZX81 probably takes the cake for worst overall as it was just a very thin membrane.
- The ZX81 wasn't too terrible, and I was also using Apple ][ systems at school at the same time. I think the worst part was the small size, but at least it still had a slight amount of feedback, and you could actually navigate it at a decent speed. Personally I would rate the idea of typing on a phone screen as the absolute worst thing I've ever tried to use.
- I had the ZX80. It was terrible.

I had original rubber key spectrum, they weren't horrible to touch but they were very slow to type on.
- I wrote a bit of BASIC on my Spectrum but there was a reason they had keyword shortcuts on that keyboard. It wasn't until I got my Dragon 32 which had I proper keyboard that I really got into coding.

The rubber keyboard was pretty weird first, felt a lot like cheap pocket calculator, but once you got used to the BASIC shortcuts, you could program like a champ on it.

I had a Sinclair QL which pioneered the keyboard. It wasn't great - it was far behind the Acorn BBCs and the Commodores) but it was quite usable.
There was significant vertical travel, and there was variation in the push the key gave back - increasing to a point of no return, then a quick downward movement to the thunk of the end of key travel.
I could type moderately fast on it.
- Phew, count me relieved. The keyboard on that clone was pretty linear as far as I can remember with no variation in force applied whatsoever

You mean the original original ones? Yeah... they were honestly really icky and rather bad for typing on at speed. I type normally at 150+ wpm and the response speed was lacking and only slowed me down. Cleaning them was... not really an option. Not unless you wanted to spend a lot of time painstakingly taking the keycaps/membrane off and carefully putting it back. I'm honestly surprised to hear that anyone would want to recreate that fucking abominable experience. masochists

10 comments