deskthority

I recently acquired a Canon Cat and am thrilled because these don’t come up for sale much. The Canon Cat was famously developed by Jef Raskin, of Apple Macintosh fame. While the Canon Cat is a more powerful word processor than most, it’s most exciting characteristic is the utilization of a new (for the time) user interface known as the Humane Interface. I have to admit, the first thing I did was use the Leap functionality (the two keys used below the space bar). For more information on the Humane Interface, please see this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface.

More pics on on my site at: http://vintagecomputer.ca/canon-cat/. Wikipedia has a very good page on the Canon Cat so if you are looking for more information, take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_Cat. Here are some pics of the keyboard with SMK Inverse Cross Mount key switches. You will notice the (Caps) Lock key has purple marker on the rim. I'm not sure why because it is not locking in any way. It does, however have an LED:

Those doubleshots are amazing...

also did anyone else think they were going to see actual cat pictures when they clicked?

This is very cool. Looks like you found a very clean one as well!

We probably need a Leap/Leap Again key in Round 8 or 9.

And if you were disappointed that there were no actual cat pictures..

the first picture almost looks like a render all I can say is "leap again"!

I highly recommend trying to use the thing as a word processor for a few days, the software is brilliant.

How much did you pay for it? I’m super jealous. (But not jealous enough to buy one of these for the $1000+ they come up for sometimes on US ebay.)

For anyone who wants similar switches and keycaps (minus the awesome leap keys, unfortunately), Canon typewriters from the late 1980s also transitioned to this type of SMK switch, and can be found somewhat commonly at flea markets, thrift stores, e-cyclers, etc., or on ebay/etc. (Previous models of Canon typewriters used various types of Alps switches.)

Very nice! I'm missing inverse cross mount switches from my SMK 2nd gen lineup xD . Good to know they can be found in old Canon typewriters btw!

The Canon cat is the best looking cat I've seen in a long time. Awesome snuci.

Very rare to see the other variant keyboard having the SMK inverse cross mount switch and I never seen the LED in that blank hole.
Please pull out all keycap to see the another color if it really has.

terrycherry wrote: Please pull out all keycap to see the another color if it really has.

I also checked the space bar and it was white but there was an additional spring to the side. I'll take a pic of that tonight.

I was also thinking I should take all the key caps off because I took the hard ones off already (the ones with the stabalizers) so I'll do that later also.

jacobolus wrote: I highly recommend trying to use the thing as a word processor for a few days, the software is brilliant.

I bought Jef's "The Humane Interface" book and am waiting for that to arrive. I'd like to read that first before I actually start to use it.

jacobolus wrote: How much did you pay for it?

I paid $500. It was not cheap but you just can't find rare examples like this; especially in pristine condition. I thought I did well on this.

jacobolus wrote: I highly recommend trying to use the thing as a word processor for a few days, the software is brilliant.

I've used one before and the CRT was also really nice, sharp and easy to read. It's certainly better than a lot of the cheap 80s CRTs, granted it came in at a far higher price point.

This thing is absolutely stunning.
Sorry for the blasphemy but wouldn't it be awesome to put new hardware in it and install something modern and use it as real world computer?

Too many cats in this thread.

Last pic as promised for terrycherry...

Oh wow, what a beautiful computer..

cookie wrote: This thing is absolutely stunning.
Sorry for the blasphemy but wouldn't it be awesome to put new hardware in it and install something modern and use it as real world computer?

The software on it already is more "real world" usable for word processing than whatever alternative software you might want to replace it with.

If you want to play games or browse the web or something, then you might as well use some different machine.

If you want to use “modern” word processing / text editing software with nice keyboard support, it would be better to build your own custom keyboard, and then afterward customize the software to take advantage of the hardware features you include.

Quick update as I am restoring my second Canon Cat. Since I had to take it completely apart to clean and check over, I took a couple of pics of the keyboard mechanism. You can now clearly see SMK on the PCB board.

Some other bloke was going to take some better photos of his Cat, but that was a year or two ago.

Curiously the slider is still white — those seem to yellow, although they're not as prone to yellowing as whatever plastic Omron used for B2R.