I'm taking the opportunity to do some (gentle) retrobrighting of my Canon Cat, using the vapor method. This includes the double-shot keycaps, which exhibit a bit of yellowing on the white legends.
This particular Cat has, since before I acquired it, sported additional stickers on four of the keys that add legends to the front: R, Y, H and M. They are printed on trapezoidal-shaped stickers, to match the front profiles of most keycaps. The printing is a shiny blue -- almost iridescent -- on the transparent sticker.
The legends are:
R: ENTRY MM [now lost]
Y: PITCH
H: AUTO DIAL
M: PRINT MM
Here are three of them removed from the keys, with metal stabilizers for scale:
Here's what's odd: third-party software for the Cat is, as far as I know, non-existent. (At least until @ClassicHasClass recently! ) The only reasons I can think of for aftermarket sublegends would be:
1) A hitherto-unknown piece of proprietary software (written in Lisp?)
2) Use of a mainframe, unix, or other terminal-based program over either a modem or a serial connection, as the Cat is a perfectly cromulent terminal and has an inbuilt modem.
Assuming these legends are for reason #2, what could they refer to? AUTO DIAL does in fact suggest a modem scenario -- but I don't think the Cat OS would intercept this. The Cat would like you to highlight a number and press the PHONE key, which is USE FRONT + ', of course
.
PITCH, ENTRY MM and PRINT MM could well refer to some kind of early layout/DTP program. They could relate to letter spacing and sizing. Latex or something more obscure?
Anyway, given the Cat's rarity, I thought a variation such as this (even if aftermarket and user-applied) could be worthwhile to document.
This particular Cat has, since before I acquired it, sported additional stickers on four of the keys that add legends to the front: R, Y, H and M. They are printed on trapezoidal-shaped stickers, to match the front profiles of most keycaps. The printing is a shiny blue -- almost iridescent -- on the transparent sticker.
The legends are:
R: ENTRY MM [now lost]
Y: PITCH
H: AUTO DIAL
M: PRINT MM
Here are three of them removed from the keys, with metal stabilizers for scale:
Here's what's odd: third-party software for the Cat is, as far as I know, non-existent. (At least until @ClassicHasClass recently! ) The only reasons I can think of for aftermarket sublegends would be:
1) A hitherto-unknown piece of proprietary software (written in Lisp?)
2) Use of a mainframe, unix, or other terminal-based program over either a modem or a serial connection, as the Cat is a perfectly cromulent terminal and has an inbuilt modem.
Assuming these legends are for reason #2, what could they refer to? AUTO DIAL does in fact suggest a modem scenario -- but I don't think the Cat OS would intercept this. The Cat would like you to highlight a number and press the PHONE key, which is USE FRONT + ', of course
.PITCH, ENTRY MM and PRINT MM could well refer to some kind of early layout/DTP program. They could relate to letter spacing and sizing. Latex or something more obscure?
Anyway, given the Cat's rarity, I thought a variation such as this (even if aftermarket and user-applied) could be worthwhile to document.