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Something different today. Today's blip is another keyboard from my collection, but one most people will have never seen. It's a Sun Type-5c ISO/UK layout keboard.

Sun Microsystems were a computer firm that made Unix workstation and server computers. They had a class of CPU that was a lot simpler and a lot faster than the comparable CPUs from Intel PCs at the time. The operating system was a proprietary version of Unix called SunOS (later Solaris).

Even though their SPARC processors were fast, Intel's processors were a lot cheaper and gradually got faster. Sadly Unix never took off and the vastly inferior Windows came to dominate desktop computers, and the Opensource Linux running on Intel processors took over in the server space. Linux isn't Unix, but it's the same idea and to be honest much better than SunOS in many ways.

Anyhow this keyboard came with a Sun SPARC Station that would have been expensive when new but was scrap at work, so I took it home many-many years ago. The workstation still works after a fashion, but to be honest it's really just a paperweight, or a historically curiosity now.

The keyboard is odd in how it communicates. Like a lot of early non PC keyboards, the mouse connects to the keyboard and then a single cable connects them both to the computer. It doesn't use the signaling protocols of PC, the PS/2 standard or the current USB standard, so you can't connect it to anything other than a Sun SPARC Station of the correct age. If you want you can connect it to a small controller, and it can convert it to be used via USB with a modern computer.

Relative to the now standard IBM PC or Mac layouts we're familiar with, this uses its own layout - which is more obvious on the extras. To the left are a bank of keys for copy, paste, help etc. Above the numeric keypad there are some media keys and the power-switch, which isn't on the computer itself... Layoutwise it's otherwise quite similar to the standard ISO/UK layout of a PC, though the LEDs for CapsLock, Scroll Lock and Num Lock are inside the keys not in a little strip - which is cute