Keyboards & Conductive Rubber

[Ethan Dicks]

On Tue, Sep 07, 2004 at 07:04:57AM -0400, Paul A. Pennington wrote:
>    Dave;
> 
>    I've tried several things on my Sony TV remote control.  The various 
> paints and other expensive fixes don't last very long.  What finally worked 
> for me was some heavy aluminum foil tape used for sealing air ducts.
> 
>    Cut some tiny squares of the tape just big enough to cover the two 
> contact pads on the circuit board and stick it to the surface of the key 
> plunger.  Evidently the resistance value is not critical, as long as it's 
> below some minimum value -- zero ohms is OK.  My repair has been working 
> for a couple of years now.

Isn't the reason the original equipment came with rubber pads was to minimize
wear of the PCB contacts?  When I was a kid, the only computer at home was a
Commodore PET (2001-N - 32K, 40 col., AKA 3032 in Europe)  One of the most
loaded programs, by me and my 3 brothers, was the machine-language version
of Space Invaders.  You move with the 4 and 6 number-pad keys, and fire with
A.  Between all of us, we wore the gold off those three pads.  I can only
imagine that copper or alumimum foil tape would do it much faster.

My solution to the damaged PCB was to A) buy a new keyboard back (at $35 from
the local dealer), B) salvage the old harness, C) build a frame from an old
Radio-Shack 150-in-1 electronic kit, D) install 3 genuine arcade buttons (about
$8 each at the time), and E) mount them in front of the computer.  I wish I
had a picture of it, but it was perfect - with the second keyboard harness, I
was able to mount the buttons in parallel with the keyboard, letting us play
Space Invaders without damaging the new keyboard.

-ethan

-- 
Ethan Dicks, A-130-S      Current South Pole Weather at 07-Sep-2004 21:50 Z
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Ethan.Dicks at amanda.spole.gov     http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html