There’s actually a neat reason for this! The way that simple keys work, like those in a calculator, is by connecting a circuit and letting a small amount of voltage through. This is usually fine because the keypad is broken up into different rollover zones, which is how multi-key input works. But if you find and press keys that are all in the same zone, their voltages add up and can actually overwhelm the little cpu in there. Really old calculators were really easy to break because designers never thought users would need to press keys like division, multiplication, subtract, add, square and square root all at once, which as you can imagine, caused a massive power spike.
Now, is any of this true? I have no idea dude, you’re calculator was probably fucking haunted or something. I’d have taken that thing to a seance with a ouija board immediately.
I think this is actually still an issue. On PCs the space bar + up + left arrow keys conflicts on some keyboards. Try it: open Notepad, press two arrow keys and then space. Most of them works but if you hold up and left, it will not make a space.
This is annoying in racing games, when you want to accelerate, turn left and use the hand brake at the same time.
I don’t know the specifics, but there is such a thing as keyboard rollover. MOST KEYBOARDS—whoa, sorry. Most keyboards support up to 6 keys at once, but it might be that they’re still divided into sections with lower rollover numbers, such as the arrow keys and space. Some “gaming” keyboards support up to 25 though, so your best bet if this bothers you is just upgrading to a spiffier typer.
There’s actually a neat reason for this! The way that simple keys work, like those in a calculator, is by connecting a circuit and letting a small amount of voltage through. This is usually fine because the keypad is broken up into different rollover zones, which is how multi-key input works. But if you find and press keys that are all in the same zone, their voltages add up and can actually overwhelm the little cpu in there. Really old calculators were really easy to break because designers never thought users would need to press keys like division, multiplication, subtract, add, square and square root all at once, which as you can imagine, caused a massive power spike.
Now, is any of this true? I have no idea dude, you’re calculator was probably fucking haunted or something. I’d have taken that thing to a seance with a ouija board immediately.
I think this is actually still an issue. On PCs the space bar + up + left arrow keys conflicts on some keyboards. Try it: open Notepad, press two arrow keys and then space. Most of them works but if you hold up and left, it will not make a space.
This is annoying in racing games, when you want to accelerate, turn left and use the hand brake at the same time.
I don’t know the specifics, but there is such a thing as keyboard rollover. MOST KEYBOARDS—whoa, sorry. Most keyboards support up to 6 keys at once, but it might be that they’re still divided into sections with lower rollover numbers, such as the arrow keys and space. Some “gaming” keyboards support up to 25 though, so your best bet if this bothers you is just upgrading to a spiffier typer.