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 😅
Teknikal ( @Teknikal@lemm.ee ) English4•18 days agoI 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.
Shdwdrgn ( @Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz ) English4•18 days agoThe 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.
TaldenNZ ( @taldennz@lemmy.nz ) English2•18 days agoI had the ZX80. It was terrible.
vext01 ( @vext01@lemmy.sdf.org ) 3•18 days agoI 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.
0xtero ( @0xtero@beehaw.org ) 3•18 days agoThe 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.