9 Jun
2006
9 Jun
'06
4:36 p.m.
Tony Duell wrote:
This only works if the keys have an obvious, displayable, function. The
machine in question was a programmable calculator, it has keys for Label,
Go To, etc. It's not clear how easy it is to test those if you don't know
where other keys (like the digits, program list, etc are).
Now I make a diagram of the keyboard before I take it apart. I use graph
paper, draw the key layout, and write in the legends for each keycap.
That then gets put in the service manual (if I have it), or in with my
notes/schematics/whatever for the machine.
-tony
I rmemeber once, severals years back, trying to
find a picture of the
keyboard of the HP9815 [1]. I'd foolishly unscrewed the PCB withut noting
where all the keycaps went, not realising they fell out if you did this.
So I needed to know where to put them back. Finding a picture of
sufficient resoultion to read the legends on the keys was non-trivial
(this was before there were sites with scanned manuals for said machine).
What I usually do in the case of loose keycaps (if the keyboard can be
assembled w/o the keytops enough to be functional), is to plug it in to a
system either at a command prompt or in a text editor, then push the
buttons to see what happens. Pop in the keycaps as their function is found.