Tony Duell wrote: Some keys display the wrong character. they don't change when they're already on screen. Sometimes they're caps and sometime not. For example: 'x' sometimes comes out as 'X' then sometimes as 'x'. C displays 'A' or 'a', 3 displays a 1, ect. I tried to clean the keyboard w/ compressed air, but no luck. Any ideas? Thanks Robert

"Ward D. Griffiths III" wrote: Would alcohol damage anything?

On Sun, 14 Mar 1999, bluoval wrote: Not if used carefully. Regular rubbing alcohol is conductive, so if you get it inside the key it will likely cause the key to short. I learned this lesson the hard way. I used to be so good to my beloved Apple //e when I was a kid. Every month I'd wipe down the entire machine, monitor and disk drives with Windex. I'd really scrub the thing and make it sparkle again. I'd also clean any grime that'd accumulated on the keycaps. One day when I was cleaning I noticed the 'A' key was getting a little sticky. So I thought that rubbing alcohol would be a good cleaning agent. So I put a few drops on the key stem and worked it a while until it didn't stick anymore. I turned the machine on and for some reason an 'A' started spewing across the screen. After a few seconds I realized that the alcohol shorted the key. I tried everything to dry that damn key out. I ran a blow dryer on it for 20 minutes to no avail. I stuck a straw up to it and blew through the straw hoping to blow it dry with my own breath but I think that only resulted in spit being introduced into the key, shorting it further. Finally, after I passed out and came to, I decided to unsolder the key as my computer was unusable at this point, since I couldn't type any command that wasn't 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAA..." I then wrote a machine language driver that made the TAB key (which is next to the 'A' on the Apple //e) become the 'A' key. This only worked on DOS 3.3 programs, since I was a pro at hacking DOS 3.3 but wasn't very versed with ProDOS device drivers. After I got sick of that solution, I soldered in two wires where the key used to be that I would touch together to produce an 'A'. After I got sick of that, I soldered in the joystick button of a joystick I'd broken apart. It was a little stiff, and a little higher than the other keys, but it sure beat the hell out of touching two wires together. I lived with that for a while until I ordered a new key from a mail order parts supplier. Unfortunately, the idiots sent me a //gs key! So I sent it back, but I never got my key or my money back. I was now out $4.65 (something like that) plus shipping, which was a lot for a kid with no job and no allowance. So I lived with the joystick key for maybe a year until I finally ordered and got the proper //e key. So the moral of this story is, don't drink rubbing alcohol. Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Don't rub the lamp if you don't want the genie to come out. Coming in 1999: Vintage Computer Festival 3.0 See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details! [Last web site update: 02/15/99]