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The Gateway AnyKey is a programmable PC keyboard that was sold with desktop computers from the Gateway 2000 company roughly from 1990 to 1995. more...

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It was manufactured in at least five known versions and incarnations by Tucson, Arizona-based Maxi Switch, now a subsidiary of LiteOn Technology Corporation. The AnyKey is no longer manufactured, with the latest dated model available marked 1996 and neither Maxi Switch, Gateway, or LiteOn offering any product labeled as or comparable to the AnyKey.

The AnyKey keyboard is easily distinguished from other generic keyboards by an extra double column of F keys on the left side, a unique eight directional arrow key pad as opposed to the traditional inverted T, and a quartet of extra keys directly above the numeric pad that control the programmable aspects of the keyboard. They are labeled “Program Macro”, “Suspend Macro”, “Repeat Rate”, and “Remap”, reading left to right. All versions of the AnyKey are white or very light gray with some keys (notably the programming keys, extra function keys, and arrows) in a darker gray.

Features and Construction

The AnyKey is a 124 key PC keyboard, including the usual complement of 101 keys in addition to others. Some revisions of its design predate the advent of the “Windows” keyboard and therefore lack the three extra keys present on such keyboards, and are replaced with extra keys for the asterisk (*) and either a backslash (\) or an octothorpe (#), depending on the intended locale.

The keyboard includes 12 extra F keys, four programming keys, and four additional arrow keys for diagonal input, as well as one blank key in the center of the eight way arrow key area that normally acts as a second space bar but can be programmed. Also, the AnyKey has a fourth indicator light to the right of the normal Num Lock, Caps Lock, and Scroll Lock lights labeled “Program”.

Since the design of the AnyKey predates the "multimedia PC," it lacks the additional multimedia keys present on many keyboards included with brand name computers like CD controls and volume knobs.

A unique feature of the AnyKey is its hardware programmability. The keyboard contains an internal controller as well as an EEPROM chip that can store user-defined macros. Any key on the keyboard can be programmed to contain a macro of arbitrary length or can be programmed to act like any other key on the keyboard (remapped). This is done on the hardware level inside the keyboard's controller itself. No driver software is required to use the AnyKey's programming functionality, as the keyboard's own controller dictates which keypress codes are sent to the attached computer. A utility for MS-DOS exists to quickly remap the entire keyboard to a predefined configuration or save its current configuration to a file, but it is not required to use or program the keyboard. The AnyKey's EEPROM memory will retain its data even if the keyboard is unplugged indefinitely, so settings and programming aren't lost if the computer is powered down, unplugged, or if the keyboard is unplugged or moved to a different computer.

Read more at Wikipedia.org