The LK421 was a detachable computer keyboard manufactured by
Digital Equipment Corporation of
Maynard,
Massachusetts and supplied as an option to the standard LK401 keyboard with their
DEC 3000 AXP workstations. The keyboard is optimized for use with the
Digital Unix line of operating systems, instead of the
OpenVMS
OpenVMS, often referred to as just VMS, is a multi-user, multiprocessing and virtual memory-based operating system. It is designed to support time-sharing, batch processing, transaction processing and workstation applications. Customers using Ope ...
operating system for which the LK401 was more suitable.
The keyboard is notable for the standard position of the
Control key for use with
Unix operating systems and an
Escape key. The keyboard has two
compose key
A compose key (sometimes called multi key) is a key on a computer keyboard that indicates that the following (usually 2 or more) keystrokes trigger the insertion of an alternate character, typically a precomposed character or a symbol.
For insta ...
s. There is no separate numeric keypad or edit key group. The functionality of the missing keys is implemented by some standard keys having a dual function. The user holds down the Extend key and presses the key with the appropriate legend on the front of a standard key to access the additional functions.
External links
More pictures of the LK421 including internals
{{Digital Equipment Corporation
Computer keyboard models
DEC hardware