Keyboard Membrane Repair

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PaulJ_2.0
Posts: 571
Joined: Sat May 11, 2019 11:32 pm

Keyboard Membrane Repair

Post by PaulJ_2.0 »

I thought I would share this as it worked.

My Amiga 600 is in great original shape, no yellowing, the drive works faultlessly and it was until recently, as good as the day it left the factory.
A few weeks back, I removed the keyboard as carefully as ever and when replacing it, the Enter and a few other keys around it stopped working. Having read about membrane issues, I pretty much knew what was going to be the problem and for sure it was the pads on the end of the ribbon cable. One had stripped badly and most others had signs of wear.

I mulled over spending £30 on a replacement membrane, but couldn't really justify that, considering the use it gets (next to none), so I thought maybe I would use some of that metallic trace repair stuff, that is pretty poor for trace repair, but metallic, so it should be ok for this application. I hoped.

This is the stuff: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/323562834443

Anyhow it arrived and I set about applying it. The results are a bit shoddy as the applicator is a hypodermic type needle and it was real hard to push out any of the contents and when you did, it would always be too much. So, the results were not exactly pleasing to the eye.
IMG_20190518_114826.jpg
IMG_20190518_114826.jpg (81.12 KiB) Viewed 2435 times
So, I let it dry for a couple of days, installed it back into the 600 and it works a treat. I have hardly used any of the paste, so if it needs a reapplication every few inserts here and there, the paste should last about 2-3 lifetimes.
I will update in a few months to report on how this worked out in the short to medium term.
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