what is the deal with 80s computer keyboards

I hear social media video blogger repeat over and over that there was not a keyboard standard in the 70s and 80s for home computers. This unfortunately is true - kinda. There were really two loose standards. How do I know? First, I own quite a few computers from the 80s. It was IBM PC that broke the simi-standard and then redefined the overall standard by "winning" the PC wars.

So what was the standard layout before IBM changed it all?

First there is What I call Standard I - This was used by majority of the early 70-80s home computers

1) QWERTY keyboard like most type-writters

2) Specific characters associated with SHIFT and numbers

(Photo of a Commodore 64 keyboard)


(Photo of a Tandy CoCo 2 keyboard)

(Photo of an Atari 130XE keyboard)

Above the 1=!, 2=", 3=#, 4=$, 5=%, 6=&, 7=', 8=(, 9=)

Who adhered to this Standard I:
- Amstrad
- Apple I and II
- Atari (400, 800, 800XL, 130XE,  ect) - *Mostly*
- Commodore (PET, Vic 20, C64)

- Dragon (32 and 64 computers)
- Tandy (Model 1, Model 2, Model 3, Model 4, Coco, CoCo2, CoCo3 and others)

Probably others were included.

Anyone that does retro programming on these systems knows it is an adjustment finding the quote above the '2' key.

Atari put a '@' with the 8 and shifted the '(' and ')' over one place.

Where did these companies come up with this format. Many decades of typewriters before them. This was much of their layout.

Standard II
Who did not use Standard I, but the Standard II? 

- Later Apple computers and Macintosh. 

- Later Atari computers (ST line), 

- Later Commodores (Amiga line), 

- all IBM computers and most compatibles like Tandy 1000 line. 

- Coleco Adam

- All Texas Instrument computers.  

IBM came up with this design, which may have influenced later keyboard's such as the Apple IIe's/Macintosh, the Commodore Amigas and Atari STs.

With the Apple IIe, Apple changed some keys around like the 2 key to be associated with @ like the IBM.

Texas Instruments TI-99/4A keyboard

What is the Standard II number line layout?

1=!, 2=@, 3=#, 4=$, 5=%, 6=^, 7=, 8=*, 9=(, 0=)

Somehow people were swayed into believing the IBM PC was superior to the computers of the late 80s.  Really was not true, but perception often wins.   As PC clones became the norm, so did this keyboard layout.

Hello World Examples from different 80's platforms

Programming in the 80's, every platform had to be differnt.

Odyssey2 Computer Intro! Assembler has multiple ways of 
displaying Hello World, here is one.

00 6B LDV.B.00  ;Load display register B with position 00
01 00
02 60 LDV.0.00  ;load register 0 with NULL
03 00
04 6C LDV.C.12  ;Load data space register C with step 12
05 12
06 09 MOV       ;Move data space to accumulator
07 30 BEQ.0.24  ;If NULL goto end
08 24
09 0B OTA       ;Display accumulator
10 12 GTO.06    ;go back to move at step 06   
11 06
12 1D           ;H  Start of data space
13 12           ;E
14 0E           ;L
15 0E           ;L
16 17           ;O
17 0C           ;space
18 11           ;W 
19 17           ;O
20 13           ;R
21 0E           ;L
22 1A           ;D
23 00           ;NULL  end of string
24 00 NOP       ;No opperation, just a place to land

TI-99/4 and TI-99/4A BASIC

10 CALL CLEAR
20 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"


ATARI 8-bit (400/800/800XL/130XE) BASIC

10 PRINT CHR$(125)
20 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"

Commodore VIC 20 BASIC

10 PRINT "{CLRSCN}"
20 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"

Commodore 64 BASIC

10 PRINT CHR$(147)
20 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"

IBM AT GW-BASIC

10 CLS
20 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"

More on 80s math processing.

I can see why Atari was so frustrated in the 80s. They were making better 8-bit and 16-bit computers than IBM and Apple for a whole lot less.



How were they better? First lets look at simple number storage in memory.

Here is IBM with a 16-bit Intel processor with Microsoft's GW-BASIC. This would have been standard with the 8086, 286, 386 processors.






With IBM, there are two interesting things going on. First, only 8 places after the decimal point is stored for processing and display.  Secondly, even in the code, the hard coded numbers past the 17th spot are cut off.

Next, I tried with the TI-99/4A. I had gotten some pretty good responses with math on this computer. The TI-99 has a 16-bit TMS9900 CPU also (the first home computer to ever to be 16-bit)




>LIST                         

 100 TEST=.123456789123456789 

 200 PRINT TEST               
>RUN                          

  .1234567891                 

  ** DONE **                  

The TI-99/4A has neither problem the IBM has.  All numbers are stored and the TI-99 display 10 digits behind the decimal.

With Atari's 8-bit MOSS 6802 CPU, we get a little bit better response than the IBM, but not much.
The better is we get 9 decimal places to work with instead of IBM's 8. Unfortunately, the hard coded value also get's changed:





100 TEST=.1234567891123456789    
200 PRINT TEST                   
RUN                              

0.123456789                      

                                 

READY                            

LIST                             

100 TEST=0.123456789             

200 PRINT TEST                   

                                 

READY                            

One additional decimal place (9) and the 0 before the decimal.

I would love to see how the Atari ST 520 , Apple Mac, or the Apple IIe stacked up against these three.

But back to the TI-99/4A.  Why did it do better than the 16 bit intel IBM computers and the 8-bit Atari computers?

Key points about the TI-99/4A's math capabilities:

First, it had an advanced (for it's time) 16-bit CPU for processing. Unlike most other home computers at the time which were 8-bit, the TI-99/4A's 16-bit processor allowed for more complex calculations with greater precision. But it still beat the x86 (that was also a 16-bit CPU).  

Although I would love to, I have not compared the TI-99/4A to computers that used the 6800 CPU.

But the TI-99/4A had another trick, The TI-99 computers had a dedicated floating-point unit. The TI-99/4A had a dedicated hardware component for handling floating-point operations, which significantly improved the speed and accuracy of mathematical calculations. 

Optimized floating-point format:

The way the TI-99/4A represented floating-point numbers internally was specifically designed for efficiency, further enhancing its mathematical performance.