On Mon, 17 Mar 2008, Tim Mann wrote: You can get at the contacts, but you'll have to desolder the entire switch first. I desoldered an entire PT210 keyboard, which uses the same keyswitches, and applied pcb-trace paint to the black rubber part. It works great now. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?

Be careful doing that on an M3 or M4 with the keyboard installed in the machine. In these amchiens the keyboard rests on 4 posts near the corners and is held down by the bezel, but there's a 5th post in the middle, under the PCB. Hitting the keyboard too hard can bend the fram enough for that last post to crack the PCB. How did I find that out? A medium sized transformer fell onto the keyboard of my M3 about 20 years ago, anf that post punched a nice hole through the SRBP board, ripping traces off in the process. I had to spend quite a time soldering wires between the switches to get it to work again. My M4 has not suffered the same way, I am a lot more careful now. Tbat sounds like the origianl M1 keyboard mechansim (also used in the DEC VT50 series, VT100s, HP85s, HP9816, TI99/4A, etc, etc, etc). I don't think any M4s used it. -tony