Firstly, be careful. The card reader chip in the HP65 [1] runs directly off tyhe bettery. If you conenct the charger and there's no good battery instaleld, you cna damagie this chip. [1] This is the cip on the long, then, PCBN down one side of the machine. It's HP custom, of course. The HP67 has much the same design, but the chip was redisigned to withstand the full charger voltage. HP67s _should_ be OK if you conenct the charger without a good battery in plce, but I don;t like to risk it. IIRC the HP67 chip will work in an HP65 (and of course the resulting HP65 will not be camaged if the charger is conencted without the battery in place). Secondly, if a machine will run from the cnager but not the battery, check the shorting contact on the charger plugi n the calculator. There's a gold-plated contact that shorts the outside 2 pins of the connector together if the charger is not plugged in. This conenctes the battery to the calcualtor. The charger hs 2 outputs. When it's plugged into the backine, the cotnaxct votlage output (4.2V) pows the logic (apart from the card reader...), the constant current output (55mA with a maximum votlage of around 15V) charges the battery. Unofficial HP65 schematics are avaialbe from HPCC. ) Nasty!. I assume the metal strip has cracks in it. You can try soldering them. It won't last too long, and the keys will feel 'worng', but it woun't do any furtehr damage. If you can get some good contact strips you can try ripping off the original (it's spot-welded, not soldered!), and solder on the replacemnt using a minimum amount of solder. It won't be perfect, but it's probably the best you can sensibly do. -tony