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Comment by purpleflame1257 | Hacker News Reader

I was still using the keyboard from an iMac G3 up until 2019. It felt fun to type on, and had a passthrough USB which was very convenient for low-power devices.

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The built-in hub was one of the best features of Apple boards for a long, long time. It started with ADB ports on on late 80s/early 90s boards and extends all the way into the 2010s when the wired aluminum board finally dropped the USB ports its predecessors carried.

It’s such an obvious little quality of life improvement, and yet the only other board I’ve come across with the feature is the HHKB Pro 2 (Pro 3 drops the hub) and some variants of Das Keyboards.

I started with an apple keyboard. I bought a Das in the early 2010s. When the das quickly ran into issues, I got an HHKB pro 2, which I’ve taken in my bag every day to every job I’ve had and I use at home[0]. Your comment just made me realize that USB hubs aren’t on every keyboard!

[0] the swappable USB cable is so handy! Just leave one plugged into each machine.

Strong agree on removal cable, to the point that I wonder why any desk peripherals nicer than a $10 K120 have permanently attached cables.

The original iMac came a perch slot that could beused for internal expansion. I installed a SCSI card and hung all my SCSI devices off it.

That was the secret expansion port that some third-parties made accessories for anyway. I recall it was gone by the Rev-B model.

Yes, I still have it with a CD-RW, DVD-RAM, Scanner, APEX 4.6 Optical Drive.

I haven't booted since maybe 2005 and I'm starting to wonder if there is battery on the motherboard I should remove.

The late 90s Sun Sparcstation machines at my uni lab also had keyboards with mouse passthru connectors.

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